Manganokhomyakovite

microcollector · Post by **microcollector** » Wed Mar 18, 2015 9:49 pm

Manganokhomyakovite from the Poudrette Quarry, Mont Saint-Hilaire, Quebec, Canada.

FOV = 3mm
Canon T2i on a Nikon PB-6 bellows with a 10X Nikon conjugate finite objective slight under design magnification.
138 frames at .01mm steps stacked with Zerene Stacker.

This is from the type lot used in the species description.

JL · Post by JL » Thu Mar 19, 2015 11:50 am

Wow!!! what a name, I did not even know that such mineral existed, but anyway, the Puodrette quarry is famous for its rare mineral species.

Nice photo and specimen, congrats.

microcollector · Post by **microcollector** » Thu Mar 19, 2015 12:19 pm

Thanks JL, glad you liked it. The Poudrette Quarry has been a favorite of mine for many years. I just wish I could have gotten back there to collect when it was open. I have 350+ specimens from there representing 217 species. It is the type locality for 66 minerals and I have about 30 of those.

This photo was a bit tricky as the pedestal it is mounted on is a bit bigger than the crystal. Also, the texture of the black liner was starting to show when I got to the bottom of the stack. I had to take the background completely black to make the photo look good.

JL · Post by JL » Fri Mar 20, 2015 6:58 am

What a nice collection of minerals from the Poudrette quarry. I hope that you will continue to show them to us.

Regards.

JL.

microcollector · Post by **microcollector** » Fri Mar 20, 2015 4:05 pm

I very seldom post here. I primarily post at Mindat.org as I can upload bigger images. My typical upload there is at 1920 x 1280 at 2.5MB per picture. They allow up to 40MB per picture. The image is presented at a smaller size but you can scroll in with a mouse wheel to get to the full size.

They also have a provision for taking a series of photos rotating the specimen between here frame. You put all the frames in a zip file for upload. Folks viewing can rotate the image to see all sides. I have not tried that yet but may when I get to shooting my larger pieces.

I also post to a blog site run by a dealer in Spain. For that I do not have to worry about resizing the images prior to posting.

If you click on the link at the bottom of my posts, it will take you to my Mindat page. You can select photos and filter them by a number of criteria. Not all my photos are as good as this. My early photos were shot through my stereo microscope. I have been working at redoing all of them starting with MSH. I have a long way to go.

You should also checkout the favorites link on my Mindat page. These will take you to some mineral images by very good photographers.

abpho · Post by **abpho** » Sat Mar 21, 2015 5:35 am

Must be an expensive hobby having to buy all your samples. I never knew this place existed in Quebec.

I had a geode that had a neat crystal structure in it. But it was covered in dust from the opening process. So I cleaned it. After cleaning the crystal was destroyed.

microcollector · Post by **microcollector** » Sat Mar 21, 2015 9:13 am

abpho,

It is not that expensive, particularly for micros. There are a few of the ones from Mont Saint-Hilaire that are pricey but they are the ones that are very rare. I have been putting the Poudrette Quarry material together almost 30 years so the expense has been spread out.

I also do field collecting. It is much easier to find good micro specimens to collect than the large showy pieces.

I belong to the Northern California Mineralogical Association and attend their annual meeting in late May or early June. There are many active field collectors in the groups and we donate our extra material to the free table. One can put together a great collection from this. Often, when a member passes, their surplus material is donated to the group for the free table. We also run an auction and have a dollar table to raise money for the group.

If you want to see expensive specimens you need to go to the Tucson show. I went in 2008 and the most expensive piece I saw was $650,000.00. There were a fair number of other six figure pieces offered. That is WAY out of my league.