My wife found this dragon in the garden a couple of weeks back after a light frost. The first photo is where it was found. A slight breeze made it difficult to capture. The second shot was after I had moved it to a more stable spot. In the second photo it has its wings going as it warms up. It flew ...

Rutile TiO2, tetragonal crystal system, Mohs hardness 6 - 6.5, density 4.23, cleavage {110} perfect {100} less good. Data from Minerals and their Localities by Bernard and Hyrsl

Doug

Brian, I have an EMZ-5TR that I used for studying minerals. I used to take photos with it but switched to a horizontal bellows setup. I use a D300, PB-6 bellows and microscope objectives. This is the same camera I used on the scope. I used the 15X oculars. I bought my scope and attachment from Jim R...

Every November, at our local mineral club show, I take my photo setup and microscope to show people the world of micro minerals. I also have several Power Point slide shows to run. I also have numerous books with photos of both macro and micro minerals. A fair bit of interest is shown each year. On ...

While I do not have to worry about this upgrade as I dumped iPhone in favor of Android, the tech net I follow mentioned that the problem seemed to be server overload causing problems with downloading the upgrade. Folks reported that latter attempts were working without issues. It seems like waiting ...

Very nice setup. As a fellow mineral collector I am as interested in your display case as well as your photo setup. Like me, you also collect minerals larger than micromounts.

Doug

Phil, Mindat is a better resource for minerals than Wikipedia ever will be. It is peer reviewed by experts in mineralogy so has higher quality data. There is also a huge photo inventory. Some Mindat member photo pages. http://www.mindat.org/user-1425.html#2_0_0_0_0__ http://www.mindat.org/user-1664....

abpho, I have a Newport 443 linear stage with a metric micrometer drive. The vernier allows moving in increments of .001mm. It is difficult to position the thimble to be able to use this effectively and it it time consuming to ensure accurate movements. My opinon is that a Stackshot would be much pr...

If there are any folks here with an interest in volcanoes, the following link goes to a site with live cameras on Mount Etna. There are currently strombolian eruptions occurring from the SE crater. These normally lead to violent eruptions with some impressive lava fountains. http://www.radiostudio7....

Over on Eruptions Blog last year, during the eruptions in Iceland and Indonesia, we took to calling it giggle translate as it came up with some very strange translations for those languages.

Doug

Oskar,

The program for sunrise and sunset as well as for the moon is The Photographer's Ephemeris. It is available at the following site.

http://photoephemeris.com/

Doug

Last weekend I attended the Northern California Mineralogical Association meeting in El Dorado, California. A Friday night staple is Whats new in Minerals presented by Sugar White of Tucson, Arizona. She has always done her presentations using 35mm slides. She used to use Kodachrome 25 until it died...

Phil,

Glad you like your new system. Like you, I got the quiet version last year and it is quiet.

Doug

Thanks for the comments. These have been blooming for about a week. Our much cooler than normal weather may have something to do with the longevity. Trillium are common in our woods and mountains and make spring hikes beautiful when large patches are found. I originally got the G9 to use on my micro...

This trillium is one of the plants we salvaged from the woods next door when development started.

Canon G9 f4 at 1/200 sec in early afternoon, no flash, cropped to remove left side of image.