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7 pics were picked
Topic Started: Jan 11 2010, 03:39 PM (682 Views)
1hp
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Fulla-Carp

Interesting photos Kenny (you got me looking on eBay for macro lenses!). Have you ever tried illuminating a diamond with a laser (maybe start with a red laser pointer), or perhaps focus a filament bulb onto a facet of the diamond (in a dark room?).

There are 10 kinds of people in this world, those that understand binary and................
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kenny
HOLY CARP!!!
Macro work opens up a whole world of stunning pics, all waiting for you in the room you are sitting right now.

Cool ideas hp.
One concern about the laser is once the beam hits the diamond a zillion reflections will explode into the room and go everywhere, including your eyes.
What's a filament bulb?

Diamonds do, because of their optical properties, get a photographer's creative juices flowing.

Diamonds are notoriously hard and time consuming to photograph.
Somehow the very optical properties that make them beautiful make them resist revealing their beauty when placed an inch away from a big black lens.
At such magnification dust is always a problem.
Diamonds seem to have a magnetic attraction to dust and grease.

Posted Image
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John Galt
Fulla-Carp
kenny
Jan 12 2010, 09:22 AM

Diamonds are notoriously hard and time consuming to photograph.
At such magnification dust is always a problem.
Diamonds seem to have a magnetic attraction to dust and grease.

That explains the box of QTips in one of the photos.

Great pics, Kenny. Have you considered getting a book published of your photos? I think you're well on your way...
Let us begin anew, remembering on both sides that civility is not a sign of weakness.
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kenny
HOLY CARP!!!
Since there seems to be some interest in macro photography I'll ramble on . . . .
At high magnification many macro lenses must almost kiss the subject.
Even if you are not photographing reflective things like gems, which behave like a mirrors, you will have trouble getting light into the front of the subject.
You can buy ringlights, which are good when you want clinical shadowless light, like for coins or stamps.
You can buy translucent white plastic domes with a hole in the center for the lens.
But here's another low-cost idea:

Cut a hole in white cardboard.
Place light behind the subject but pointing towards the board, like this.
My light is just a cheap spiral CFL from Home Depot.
You can use their $5.00 aluminum clamp fixtures.

Posted Image

Place camera behind hole and push lens up to the hole.
(It is pulled away from hole for demo purposes here.)
Note I'm using two cheap extension rings.

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The result will be a large source of soft even light, which is ideal for diamonds and many other subjects like bugs.

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Next if you're feeling froggy you can put colored objects between a reflective subject and the cardboard.

Posted Image

Which yields this, note the red and blue on the metal too.

Posted ImagePosted Image
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Red Rice
HOLY CARP!!!
Those are cool pictures, kenny.
Civilisation, I vaguely realized then - and subsequent observation has confirmed the view - could not progress that way. It must have a greater guiding principle to survive. To treat it as a carcase off which each man tears as much as he can for himself, is to stand convicted a brute, fit for nothing better than a jungle existence, which is a death-struggle, leading nowhither. I did not believe that was the human destiny, for Man individually was sane and reasonable, only collectively a fool.

I hope the gunner of that Hun two-seater shot him clean, bullet to heart, and that his plane, on fire, fell like a meteor through the sky he loved. Since he had to end, I hope he ended so. But, oh, the waste! The loss!

- Cecil Lewis
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