Analcime nearly 20 years on...
Mineral Matters #375
Photos from years gone by, that didn’t look that bad at the time, look terrible now!
I have retaken a photo of an interesting analcime specimen from Bickers Quarry in New Zealand. It has an unknown white “inclusion”, probably a pre-existing mineral. It may be thomsonite.
The earlier photo, taken in 2007, is a single shot. No stacking (by me) in those days! So not a really bad effort. My camera at the time was a point and click Sony DSC-W70, handheld to one of my microscope eyepieces (with a short cardboard tube to orient it). The original photo was 3072x2304 pixels and a file that was 2.86Mb in size.
The latest photo original is 6718x4478 pixels and 15.5Mb in size. What you see below is a 50% crop. The camera is a Canon EOS R with a Laowa 25mm f/2.8 2.5-5X Ultra Macro lens, plus 32mm of extension tubes.
Below: Photo taken June 2024. Click on the image for a higher resolution version.
Below: Photo taken May 2007.
feast for the eyes!
...and really showed the superiority of the new shot
(which I was - somewhat surprisingly - not expecting to be able to see that well)
Inspiring!
I just started crude photography with my pixel 7a and a stand, to my scope. I'll have to try that cardboard tube thing. How short, about an inch?