My Hobby Of Making And Photographing Micromounts.

[mawnansmiff]

Prompted by forum member Mike's thread on unusual hobbies I thought what a great opportunity to show off some of my favourite micromounts.

A micromount is simply a selected piece of rock that contains or is even made up entirely of an interesting mineral. There are around 2000 minerals on this planet and many of them are in crystal form, and often as not these crystals are very tiny and can only be viewed through a microscope.

I use both a Meiji and a Leica Wild for this purpose. For photographing these micromounts I use a standard Canon DSLR fitted with Kenko extension tubes with a Canon macro lens designed for the purpose but sometime Pentacon or Tokina lens mounted in reverse fashion. All this sits upon a tripod for stability as taking pictures at this level means everything has to be rock solid.

Again, due to the magnification required to make an image I have had to use 'image stacking' where many images are taken at minute distances apart then combined into one image to create the correct depth of field. The most I ever did was something like 129 individual shots to make one image!

Most pictures below are roughly 3 - 4 mm wide.

Enjoy.













The above Grossular garnets picture is a mere 2mm from left to right.





The above Scholzite is made up of 129 separate images.



That's enough for now.

Regards,

Jay.

 

[greeneyes]

This is beautiful, and very relaxing to view. Thanks!

 

[scloyd]

Wow! That is amazing Jay. Thanks for posting.

 

[workman]

Just wonderful!

 

[timelord]

Beautiful images.

 

[kcghost]

Wow, that's some fine work.

 

[sandollars]

Beautiful work!

 

[trudger]

Well done. More please.

 

[warren]

Fascinating! Lot's of technique and, most important I think, patience. I lack the later. I'm impressed Jay!

 

[didimauw]

Those are awesome! I would like to see the zoomed out pictures too, to see what I'm looking at!

 

[mawnansmiff]

Thanks for the comments guys, here's a few more....



Above is cleiophane.



Above is chalcopyrite on quartz.



Above is galena (lead ore) from Russia.



Above is botryoidal malachite.



Above is siderite from the world famous South Crofty Tin Mine here in Cornwall.



Above is radial dundasite on dolomite.



Above are tufts of gypsum crystals.



Above are some stunning aragonite crystals.



Above is some beautiful goethite.

Regards,

Jay.

 

[hoosierpipeguy]

Beautiful and fascinating. Thanks for sharing.

 

[mawnansmiff]

"Those are awesome! I would like to see the zoomed out pictures too, to see what I'm looking at!"

Didi, to the naked eye they're usually pretty dull though the more colourful ones are easier to see.

Each mount by the way is fixed into a small (roughly 25mm) square see through perspex box with the specimen affixed to the lid. These are then labelled with specimen name, source, date etc. To view a specimen one just gently removes the lid and places it under a microscope.

It's a fascinating world of miniature wonders from the bowels of the earth.

Regards,

Jay.

 

[sablebrush52]

Hi Jay,

Wondrous sublime!

The 129 shot Scholzite image, was that to carry tack sharp focus across a deeper field than you could get from stopping down the lens? I'm guessing that depth of focus is extremely shallow with these super macro set ups.

 

[mingc]

Wow, wow, wow!!!! Simply superb!

Surely, they must all be plume, not mold!

Do you have a background in geology? What got you into this hobby?

 

[mso489]

mawn', what engaging engrossing images. You really have down the technology to capture these. If you haven't already, you might look into a gallery show of these as fine art. In my working life, I occasionally toured visitors through the building and one of my standard stops was the electron
microscopy hallway where many examples of their work were displayed. Really delicious geometrics and compositions, but not nearly as fulsome with color and variegated forms as your images. (Incidentally, I somewhat invented the tour and cultivated it over time, to think of ways to capture the place and its biomedical research. It fed my inner show biz.)

 

[augiebd]

Thanks for sharing, Jay. MSO has a great idea. I appreciate the description of the process. The leveraging of the technology to create the images and their effect is impressive. I look forward to your answer to @sablebrush52’s question. A lot more than the work of a skilled technician, serious artistry as well.

 

[mawnansmiff]

Jesse, yes, you are quite correct. The depth of field at these magnifications is terribly shallow that image stacking is the only way around it.

if you look again at the grossular (variety hessonite) garnets in the first tranche you will see that it was a single (and lucky) shot that clearly shows the problem.

Tom, I'm a member of MINDAT and have uploaded many hundreds of these images to their site. If you go to Google and type "JIGRoland Mindat" you should be able to view them.

A few years ago I printed off a whole load of these and mounted them on cards to be used as birthday cards etc.

Regards,

Jay.

 

[chilipalmer]

Those are super cool!

Cheers,

Chili

 

[goldenmole]

Wait! Is that MOLD?