I take my macro photographs with an Olympus E330 SLR camera, using the Zuiko 50 mm macro lens. I use a home-made apparatus to photograph in, which doesn't much resemble any setup I've read about. A bank of 8 50 watt halogen lights is directed upward at an arcuate hood lined with crushed aluminum foil; beneath the lights and about 30 cm above the specimen is a sheet of frosted transparent acrylic. Small pieces of black cardboard, placed on top of the acrylic sheet, allow me to selectively shade some areas to eliminate or reduce extreme reflections. All of these elements are mounted within a wooden frame spray-painted flat black to eliminate all but overhead light. Small white or aluminized cardboard reflectors, angled towards the specimen from the surface or from attached wires anchored to vertical segments of dowel (painted black!), provide for fill lighting and control of specific reflections. Exposure times are typically about 1 second but may be as great as 3.2 seconds.

I recently acquired a Canon MP-E 65mm lens for microphotography, which gives magnifications of 1-5x (minimum FOV=4 mm). 1x is the same magnification as the Zuiko 50mm macro with an extension tube, so I have a continuous range to work with. The Canon lens is particularly useful because it is a zoom, allowing me to widen the field of view in case a crystal is a bit too large at full magnification. I use a Manfrotto micrometer stage, with a computer-controlled motor (originally meant for astrophotography!)for movement. The minimum working distance with the lens is 4.1 cm, which is just enough to allow me to use the same lighting setup I do for macros. Any less, and I've have to use small halogen sources on goosenecks, although I may experiment with home-made fiber optic sources in the future.

Although I have happily used CombineZ for years for all my macro photos, I find it to be inadequate for stacking microphotographs, where high-contrast, fine details are so often in direct contact with unfocussed regions. I have begun using Zerene Stacker, and the improvement is so dramatic I feel I now must go back and re-photograph many of my specimens! But we must all acknowledge Alan Hadley for pioneering CombineZ, and working on it so hard for many years for no charge. I claim some responsibility for suggesting the pyramid stacking algorithm to him, which I did "by hand" before he automated it, and it seems to have been picked up by other software writers.

I hope you enjoy my Mindat gallery! My avatar is a photo of a pair of rock hyraxes from Mount Kenya.

last edited November 29, 2012.