Macro Monday 34, gold and diamonds

It's been a while, but macros can be fussy, and they aren't the sort of thing to rush. I've been busy with other things, and macros are often a winter thing for me. Yes, today is an almost winter day. (I'm writing this on Sunday.)

Normally I leave the camera and macro lens all set up ready to go but that wasn't the case this time. I'd lent Michelle my camera during a walk through Fish Creek, and hadn't set it back up again. I'm so used to my new camera that I find it hard to operate the old one now. It's fun to do this, playing with light and focus and composition, while struggling with depth of field constraints.

As we drink our wine, sometimes we find big wine diamonds in the bottles. I set these aside if they look interesting. This was one of the bigger ones, with lots of interesting shapes and angles. You never really know till you see it on screen.

This one has something in the bottom left, some hairs maybe. The problem is they are invisible to the naked eye, and I couldn't remove them. Perhaps they are a flaw in the diamond itself. There is some faint red lighting from the laser.

The red lighting comes from me shining a laser on it during a longer exposure. That changes it in surprising ways.

Do you see the red dog in the bottom right of the diamond?

Normally with wine diamonds you get cubes, or you get curves. The whites are often cubes, and the red ones are often curves. This one is unusual in that it has both curves and that cube in the upper left.  Yes, it's invisible to the naked eye. I'm not even sure it's on the surface.

While in Yukon our tour visited Camp 33, and we had the opportunity to pan for gold. I got these little flakes. I mean, really little. The biggest of them probably isn't much longer than 1 or 2 mm. They usually live in a little vial of water, and I was really careful pulling them out. I was using a set of needle nose tweezers to pick them up or move them. The tip would cover most of any of these flakes.

Don't they sort of look like steak on the BBQ? I played with lighting these up with the laser, but that didn't come out so well. This was the only photo I liked, and believe me, I had lots to look at. There's about 70 shots, mostly trying to cope with depth of field and focus issues. I had originally thought to pile them up and try to shoot them like they were a single nugget, but that didn't work out. I think the only way that will work is to get into focus stacking. This is pretty well maximum magnification for this lens. I'll have to think about adding the extension tubes and maybe shooting just the one in the top left corner by itself.

In the end I jiggered this up so I could shoot straight down with the gold sitting on a black surface, supported by another tripod. There's an LED lamp just off screen to the left. You can just see the laser sitting beside the lower tripod, it's a red spot in the green matt.

Deadwood of the Day
The fun thing about macro is playing with a sense of scale. Now, I've already told you this is a chunk of wood. But what if I'd said it was Jupiter?