January 24 Through February 4—TUCSON, ARIZONA: Annual show
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PostPosted: Mon Nov 09, 2009 12:01 pm 
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Tim wrote:
Alternative: buy a wild M400 and you have super fine focus built in your scope :D


well i see an unauthorized ad in the wrong section here.. :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:

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PostPosted: Mon Nov 09, 2009 7:10 pm 
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Alberto -

I am not certain exactly what you are asking to see so I will show you my oldest, my intermediate and my new darkfield.

The oldest was used on my second scope which was on a large boom microscope stand and had no lighted base. I originally found a flat LED plate on e-bay that provide good illumination for visual inspection. I purchase a darkfield condenser on e-bay for a totally different scope and then used it with the LED plate. It worked well for visual examination but provided too little light for good photography without extended exposure times.

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then went back and designed another system to take better photographs. I cut a piece of thick acrylic plastic in half on a 45 degree diagonal and epoxy'd a mirror in the resultant split. I put the darkfield condenser on top.

I then used my flash to light the image for photos. The camera would control the exposure automatically with the flash tethered. I used a couple of fiber optic lights to light the sample for manual focus, then fired the camera and flash for exposure. It worked very well.

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My new microscope now has regular and darkfield illumination built-in at the flip of a lever on the right side of the base. The photo shows the darkfield in place. I haven't done any photos yet with this unit, but the light is very bright.

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I am more interested currently in getting two polarizers mounted for use in looking at thin sections. I need to use a short stack of images on some of the thin sections to get sharper focus as they are not always perfectly parallel with the glass slide. (My next little project.)

Do these answer your question?

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PostPosted: Mon Nov 09, 2009 11:44 pm 
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Some material I picked up at Tucson last year and didn't get around to photographing until now ...

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The first stone is a cut piece of quartz with imbedded anatase and rutile crystals. The second two were puchased as ankangite in quartz and the smaller of the two actually is. The larger (center stone) may have ankangite in it, but the more interesting inclusion is a silver colored metallic.

The anatase, rutile, and what appears to be the remainder of a licorice twist :D

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This is the interesting inclusion in the second stone. These stones supposedly had a mix of ankangite and celsian, but neither mineral should look like this crystal. The thin crystals at the edges may well be ankangite. (Update - the metallic looking inclusion is celsian with an air gap around it making it look like a mirror/metallic surface. - direct from a e-mail form the seller!)

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This is from the smallest cut stone on the right end, and it appears to be a cluster of ankangite needles with another pseudo metallic cubic material to the right. Another interesting unknown in the mix.

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Last edited by theimage1 on Wed Nov 11, 2009 3:08 pm, edited 2 times in total.

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PostPosted: Tue Nov 10, 2009 12:34 am 
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Good GAWD! These are awesome shots.

May I recommend that everyone interested in photography with gems read the articles freely available through: www.theimage.com
:smt023


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PostPosted: Tue Nov 10, 2009 1:58 am 
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WOW :!:


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PostPosted: Tue Nov 10, 2009 3:41 am 
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Woohoo! Very nice!


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PostPosted: Tue Nov 10, 2009 3:44 am 
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hi Ron,
let me congratulate with you again for the picture you posted, they're really AWESOME, indeed!
i saw somewhere your 1st and 2nd darkfield setup, maybe in an older post, Your new olympus base definitely seems really good! :D
ciao
alberto

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PostPosted: Tue Nov 10, 2009 1:39 pm 
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Really great shots Ron!!
Looking forward to the future ones...

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PostPosted: Tue Nov 10, 2009 2:48 pm 
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When you finally get around to the stuff you bought nearly a year ago, you actually find some very interesting things. Glad I got to do most of them done before I took off to Tucson again this year. I guess you should really take the time to examine what you have already purchased! :lol:

Here is a stibnite cluster in a quartz gem. The larger cluster is about 3 mm in length. (Update from e-mail from sample provider - it was sold as stibnite, but has since been analyzed as Jamesonite.)

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Two different samples of dolomite in quartz. The first is a real "bolder", it's about 4mm in size by itself. The second pair is a good deal smaller, the little one impaled by the rutile crystal is just under 1mm.

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Most of these samples were purchased from Marco Campos Venuti, he had a room in the Pueblo Inn show and had more samples of included stones than I saw anywhere else by a wide margin.

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Last edited by theimage1 on Wed Nov 11, 2009 3:10 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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PostPosted: Tue Nov 10, 2009 2:57 pm 
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theimage1 wrote:
Most of these samples were purchased from Marco Campos Venuti,.


i usually buy many of my samples from his associate partner, Michele Macrì, he will be in tucson with Marco for sure, thay have a lot of very interesting stones with exceptional inclusions... really worth the visit for an inclusion-addicted!! :D
ciao
alberto

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PostPosted: Tue Nov 10, 2009 4:50 pm 
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Booth number and location?


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PostPosted: Tue Nov 10, 2009 5:52 pm 
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Last year he (Marco and Michele) were in the Pueblo Inn Show in Canopy C1 and in Building A room 113. There was one other dealer in the Pavilion which had a fair amount of included stones, but mostly the more standard materials (epidote, rutile, lepidochrosite, sunstone, hematite, etc.) in booth 131, Vista Gems.

Marco and partner had all the "weird ones" and about 7o% were identified. They had materials mainly in quartz, but I also got some samples with inclusions in topaz (not identified), and they had some in beryl and few more exotics.

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PostPosted: Wed Nov 11, 2009 5:16 am 
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Just talked to Michele and he confirmed he will be in Tucson same hotel & room number. He said also the hotel changed name from "the pueblo inn" to "river park inn".
the coolest thing of their specimens is that almost every stone is cutted and arranged around the inclusion and, for our market this is really unique. :D
ciao
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 Post subject: Ocean Jasper CLose ups
PostPosted: Fri Nov 13, 2009 11:58 am 
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I tried some Ocean Jasper - one of my favorite close up subjects. The material that is fundamentally 99% agate has some really well defined orbs throughout most of it. There are little "star clusters" in many of the orbs, I guess nature repeats itself at the infinite size and again in the micro.

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 Post subject: Fluorite in Quartz
PostPosted: Wed Nov 25, 2009 6:15 pm 
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Here is a small quartz crystal with fluorite embedded. The faces of the crystal were polished and in the process one of the fluorite crystals was clipped. You can see how a crystal tip was flattened at the quartz surface in the close-up images.

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This first close-up was taken with mainly dark field illumination. There was some additional lighting from the sides to help highlight the external texture in the crystals.

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The second image is taken with reverse illumination through the sample and better shows the color and 3D shape of the crystals. The sample was not moved between these first two images.

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The final close-up image was taken through the opposite side of the quartz crystal. This shows better the internal growth patterns in the fluorite. Sets of internal "ghosts" can easily be differentiated in the left crystal.

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