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). Meanwhlie I take three of those, one with Ringlight around my Luminars and two furthermore with two gooseneck fibre optick illuminators each. 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. My colour temperature is 3300 K, and white balance is not so difficult to set at the camera. Using different light sources lead to different colour temperature values, and You will not be happy with the result. Correcting afterwards i time consuming and not recommendable.

In May 2008 I got the upgrade of my microscope to the CZ Stereo Discovery 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 brought some improvement.

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.

December 2010 I finished assembling a second stand with a 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. 21 mm working distance or more allows enough external illumination with gooseneck fiber lighting. For FOVs smaller than 1,5 mm the Discovery V.20 for the moment remains 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 mineral collection once again. Some of them I could improve over years step by step. I don't appreciate my very first attempts now any longer but don't erase them all to see and show the progress made.

January 2012 I changed my old bellows to a new Novoflex one and bought a Sony Nex 7.
The APS-C sensor of the MFT camera and the new bellows allowed a FOV down to appr. 2 mm with the Luminar 25. A 4000x3000 pixel crop of the picture delivers slightly better results than the related FOV taken by my Microscope. However, the number of layer pictures required increases to typically 100-250 depending on magnification. Also the z increment resolution of my motor driven focus is now a little unsatisfying. I work actually on building a piezo stage similar than a stack shot but more stiff and with a nanometer accuracy.

Since Luminar lenses now are about fifty years old I always wonder if there are state of todays art alternatives. Inspired from a Microfotografic Forum and some blogs of the icon of Microphotography Charles Krebs I tested the full set of Mitutoyo objectives, 2x, 5x, 10x, 20xSL, 50xSL. SL stands for more working distance. Even the 50x has comfortable 20 mm. As a difference to the Luminars all Mitutoyo lenses need an additional tubus lens. I used several Nikkor 105 mm manual focus lenses. A high sensitiveness to bright light of the Mitutoyos required high f-stop values with the tubus lens and loss of resolution by doing so. The achieved resolution at the end was not satisfying compared to the old Luminar lenses. I stay with my Luminar lenses. For minerals I regard them as nonplusultra even today. Maybe by photographing insects bright light and reflections aren't so decicive than with metallic or glassy surfaces of minerals. One successful outcome of this sidestep is using a Nikkor 105 mm Objective as a tubus lens with a Luminar 25 mm in front. Magnification increases by 20 % and resolution improves slightly also. The Working distance reduces to appr. 12 mm and is boarderline with this setup. Its my best way of taking fotos with an FOV of 1 mm.

I have at least four different Luminars to work with in parallel. My solution for a reasonable quick change is using a bellows adapter Novoflex BALPRO to Canon FD bajonet, FD to M42 adapter and M42 to RMS. The dust problem I experienced with my full frame Canon D5 DSLR already is the same or even worse with the Sony Nex 7 MFT camera now. Frequent change of objectives comes along with more and more dust over time on the sensor. Due to a very volatile particle status on the sensor I prefer cleaning the sensor by myself from time to time and correct remaining dust artifacts with a program like photoshop. Dust map correction takes a lot of time for processing and is always "old" because of getting always new particles over time. Different to the earlier attempts with the foto tubus on the microscope the artifacts are now constantly sticking at one place on the picture, while the lateral movement of the microscope due to stacking let become the artifacts stripes, which are much more difficult if not impossible to erase in the final stacked picture.

Due to lack of time my foto uploads to mindat are pending by now. Maybe in the future after retirement things will be easier...