Born in 1958, I collect minerals since I was a 14 years old boy. In the very first years I became a micromounter, for cost reasons originally, but many of those species are not at all available in bigger dimensions than some tenth of a millimeter. Such a micromount-collection requires not much space and swapping and buying is very easy with partners all around the world. Additionally those little crystals are very often more perfect than their big brothers.

Beside the fascination of minerals itself there was a big motivation for me taking photos of my items. The vision of an encyclopedia was born. For reaching that goal there is a lot to do, I am working on that...

I used my first microscope for about ten years. It had no zoom and no foto-tubus. Taking photographs through the ocular was not really satisfying.

I bought my second microscope from my first bonus. It was an Olympus SZ60 and had both, a zoom and a photo tubus. I used that for a long period of time. I built myself an adapter for a SLR-camera and started with taking photos. I used special tungsten film for diapositives. From 36 photos of one single film had I could make use of only two in average. The rest was scrap. Between taking pictures and getting the processed film from the lab passed several days, and I didn’t really remember what was wrong with the parameter settings. The exposure time was normally between 30 and 60 seconds, and I could only have a rough idea, how the photo would probably look like while looking through the viewfinder. This efficiency was finally too bad and costly for me, and I gave up photographing for some years.

The breakthrough came for me with the invention of digital cameras. Immediately after taking a photo I could see if it was good or not. From then on the camera was not longer the limitation, but the microscope itself and at least as important - the illumination.

The further breakthrough came with depth of view enhancing software using the multi-layer technique. The challenge now is making use of this and although let a photo appear naturally and and give it 3-dimensional properties. End of 2004 I bought my third microscope, the Carl Zeiss Discovery.V12. I used a Nikon coolpix 8400 camera, attempts with a Canon D5 were not successful. SLR cameras suffer from dust on the imager in combination with multi-layer technique and long exposure times.


All the time I use halogen light sources (250W from Schott). I refuse LEDs because of the high light density which spoils almost every picture, at least without diffusing. In addition, the colours aren't really true, see also Tony Petersons remarks on the micromounting message board.

In May 2008 I got the upgrade to V.20 (FOV 20...1 mm) and the adapter for a Canon G9. 12 Mipxels instead of previously 8 and a spread of the Microscope to a max magnification of 225x instead of 150x before give more oppotunities. My pictures dated 6/2008 or later are 12 Mp fotos compressed to 1000x750 pixels.

In December 2008 I got a brand new Nikon Coolpix P6000. In comparison to the Canon G9 there is a minor improvement in resolution and noise behaviour. However, my main reason for taking the P6000 was the remote shutter release feature with an infrared remote control device. This gives the possibility to take lots of layer pictures without having a hand on the camera or the microscope either, with improves quality at high magnifications. Before, every touch on the camera in order to release the shutter (with 2 sec. delay of course) gave a micro impact to the whole system with vibrations and the risk of a movement of the object. While the Nikon Coolpix 8400 had some hot pixels and the Canon G9 lenses were not fully sealed to atmosphere and suffered from dust in the lens I had to work with dust maps then. With the P6000 there is actually no need for cleaning artifacts or anything else. Pictures on mindat from January 2009 on are compressed from 13,5 Mp pictures to 1024x768 pixels.

December 2010 I finished assembling a second stand with motor driven stative from Carl Zeiss like the Discovery V.20, but with a bellows and CZ Luminar lenses in front instead of a microscope. See thread at the Photography topic. I choose the Panasonic Lumix GH2 for that purpose: 16 MPixel sensor with 5,5 MPixel per square centimeter imager, no mirror, tilt and swivel display, radio controlled wireless shutter release. With no practice at all I could achieve pretty good pictures at the very first attempts. Their resolution is remarkably better than taken with the Discovery V.20, but only down to FOV of appr. 1,5 mm. The whole setup seems to be more robust against reflexions and bright light spots. Maybe the PlanApo 1,5 of the V.20 gets too much diffuse light. The 25 mm Luminar seems to become the most appropriate lens with a FOV from 3,5 to 2,5 mm with the bellows only and down to 1,5 mm with a bellows extension. 11 to 21 mm working distance allows enough external illumination with gooseneck fiber lighting. Some first photos are now uploaded, more will come. There is obviously a limitation to FOVs larger than 1,5 mm for the bellows. For FOVs smaller than 1,5 mm the Discovery V.20 remains for me benchmark. Pictures taken with the Luminar 16mm or the Nikon M Plan 40x have a good resolution but suffer from very small depth of view, which lets the transition from sharp to unsharp areas appear very prompt and artificial. The Luminar 25 and 40 mm lenses are my favorites now and I take a lot of photos from my personal collection once again. Some of them I could improve over years step by step. I cannot see my very first attempts now any longer but don't erase them to see and show the amazing progress.