Sand garnets balanced on sand

1of1snowflakes · Post by **1of1snowflakes** » Wed Mar 11, 2020 9:59 am

I have been doing these for a while and have really become intrigued by the process.
I recently purchased the Olympus MC-20 teleconverter, and when combined with the Olympus 60mm macro lens (using two PIXCO 10mm extension tubes), and the Raynox 202, I can get 8.5x magnification with excellent clarity at f5.6 and iso 400-500. Here are some samples I recently took...

all the garnets are in the .25mm category. I use high resolution mode on my EM1 mark 2 and stack between 50-80 images depending on the depth of the grains.

The first four images are using the above setup.

1of1snowflakes · Post by **1of1snowflakes** » Wed Mar 11, 2020 10:07 am

These four images are using a Mitutoyo 10x with the same EM1 mark 2 camera at about 8x magnification, along with the Qool Rail 250 - about the same number of images stacked. However at times I take two shots per step, which doubles the number of images to around 120-140.

I have to deal with flare a lot more with this setup, and my mitutoyo i bought used has issues with the lens facing the camera as the finish is wearing off or was scrubbed off partially. I may just remove all the rest of the finish per my dad's recommendation who is a lens craftsman for the aerospace industry. He said none would be better than damaged and spotty.

My personal preference is to eventually obtain a LWD Olympus 10x - but everywhere I look they are in the $1500 range.

Smokedaddy · Post by **Smokedaddy** » Wed Mar 11, 2020 10:49 am

Interesting, those turned out nice.

abpho · Post by **abpho** » Fri Mar 13, 2020 4:34 am

Wow.

That's all I can say.