07-14-2016, 11:33 PM | #1 |
shots FIRED
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bmah's Crystal Photography
Several years back, I made a promise to Xiz to make a thread documenting my photography, just like he did with his own photography back in 2012. Better late than never, but here it is!
For those of you who don't know, one of my favorite hobbies is collecting rocks and minerals. As my collection grew, I eventually needed to archive my collection on a spreadsheet. More recently, I decided to photograph my collection as part of my documentation. And as I took more photos, I tried to refine my macro photography as well. I posted some old photos in a 2014 thread here, but now that I have a lot more photos since then, I decided to make my own thread. I concurrently post most of these images on both my DeviantArt and Instagram accounts, so I'll update this thread as well when I have something new. Feel free to comment. Enjoy! Expect more photos later! |
07-14-2016, 11:48 PM | #2 |
Under the scarlet moon
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Re: bmah's Crystal Photography
This rocks! (I'm sorry)
Cool to see a thread with your works. I've been following from dA since you mentioned back then. |
07-14-2016, 11:50 PM | #3 |
Picker @ JAX2
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Re: bmah's Crystal Photography
this thread rocks
i like your photo comments, especially on stacking because i didn't even know that was a thing you could do edit DAMMIT Last edited by inDheart; 07-14-2016 at 11:50 PM.. |
07-15-2016, 12:28 AM | #4 |
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Re: bmah's Crystal Photography
This is amazing! I Used to collect minerals and crystals, and such years and years ago! I Also love the quality of the images. Brings me back
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07-15-2016, 01:48 AM | #5 |
lol happy
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Re: bmah's Crystal Photography
What focus rail do you use? Just curious.
Awesome pictures man
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07-15-2016, 02:43 AM | #6 |
♩♪♫♬♭♮♯
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Re: bmah's Crystal Photography
That's awesome bmah!
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07-15-2016, 04:44 AM | #7 |
Sir Krisk
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Re: bmah's Crystal Photography
I know next to nothing about rocks and minerals but they've always fascinated me. Very impressive set of crystals you got here imo
My favourite has got to be the Erythrite. Although it seems a touch out of focus with the closer crystals (you did mention that you were focusing on the bigger crystals), it's still a very nice pic The Veszelyite is probably the sexiest though.
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07-15-2016, 06:00 AM | #8 |
End of the road
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Re: bmah's Crystal Photography
I'm a fan, keep it up
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07-15-2016, 04:45 PM | #9 |
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Re: bmah's Crystal Photography
Pretty cool man. The thing that sucks about UV light is the colour burn on the blue end but pretty nice results nonetheless.
You do have this on a tripod ye? You should attempt to do light painting with these if lighting is consistently an issue, with a darker environment and longer exposure, it can turn out quite well. All your stuff is rendered very nicely and I could see em in some sort of catalogue about them avec the details. Macro photography is sweet so nice taste
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Last edited by Spenner; 07-15-2016 at 04:46 PM.. |
07-15-2016, 05:16 PM | #10 |
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Re: bmah's Crystal Photography
this is the coolest thing i've seen on this site in years
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07-16-2016, 01:39 AM | #11 |
TWG Chaos
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Re: bmah's Crystal Photography
please never let this thread die
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07-16-2016, 02:25 AM | #12 | |
Bridge Burner
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Re: bmah's Crystal Photography
Oh wow the Azurite you have are really cool!
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07-16-2016, 02:43 AM | #13 | |||
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Re: bmah's Crystal Photography
Quote:
I don't use a focus rail. If I had a non-SLR/DSLR camera, then I would definitely invest in one however. My older pictures (not shown here) were taken with a regular handheld digital camera, and a focus rail would've come in handy back then. The way I take these pictures is to move the lens ring to essentially change the zoom levels. Each time I zoom in, I take a shot. Then incrementally I zoom in a little more and take another shot. Rinse and repeat however many times until I get full "coverage" (or the coverage I want) of the image in crisp detail. All of this is done with the DSLR camera on a tripod. With my older digital camera, focus stacking would not be possible unless I had a focus rail. So my older pictures were rather blurry. Quote:
Quote:
The issue with the UV light actually has to do with the light itself. High-quality UV lights do not emit a residual blue light, but those cost hundreds of dollars ($400-800) and I'm not ready to invest in one of those yet. I probably will look into getting a short wave UV light first, as many minerals only fluoresce under those shorter wavelengths. Right now, all I have is a long wave UV flashlight and a long wave UV bar light (that I bought from one of those birthday party stores). Yup, everything's on a tripod. I'm lucky that I'm not in a high-traffic area, or else vibrations from outdoor vehicles would make focus stacking a real hassle. Can you explain what light painting is? I'm not quite sure what you mean. Would the fact that I'm merging multiple images via focus stacking create an issue for light painting? None of these photos are taken from a single shot. If I update with the same regularly that I do with Instagram, then this thread should last a fair while! Last edited by bmah; 07-16-2016 at 02:45 AM.. |
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07-16-2016, 03:38 AM | #14 |
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Re: bmah's Crystal Photography
I'll be continuing to update with loads of pictures until I catch up to my latest image. Then I'll probably update with individual pics from that point on.
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07-16-2016, 08:19 AM | #15 |
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Re: bmah's Crystal Photography
Since you are focus stacking then indeed light painting will be a problem. However, the fact that you can cleanly shoot at f/16 or even more permits you to have a way around that. What I mean by light painting is literally dancing a light around a high f-stop, low ISO exposure, highlighting whatever facets you are wanting to showcase, while in a dark environment. And then it'll pick up whatever the light has licked, so you can make it appear as though you have a much more elaborate light source (even using a flashlight or something can work as long as it's a pretty white LED).
It's only viable if you a have a solid rig but it appears you do :P anyhow just an idea if you feel restricted, but you are having solid results with what you're doing.
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07-16-2016, 01:30 PM | #16 |
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Re: bmah's Crystal Photography
I see. Looking at some examples online, I see this being an issue for highlighting the crystals, because it would probably be hard to control which crystal faces are reflected, and to what degree. Lighting is everything for mineral photography, and light painting is probably too dynamic to make that work properly.
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07-16-2016, 02:22 PM | #17 |
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Re: bmah's Crystal Photography
Hard thing to master ye. But is indeed possible.
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07-16-2016, 03:28 PM | #18 |
lol happy
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Re: bmah's Crystal Photography
Cool that just the lens ring alone of a DLSR is enough to get the precise control you need for focus stacking. I didn't know that!
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07-19-2016, 12:04 AM | #19 |
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Re: bmah's Crystal Photography
More stuff.
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06-2-2017, 12:02 AM | #20 |
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Re: bmah's Crystal Photography
I'm not dead!
(p.s. these are still old pics, relatively speaking) (p.p.s. I'm not adding descriptions anymore unless people are interested) |
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