Show us your fossils through a macro lens.

[TOM BUCKLEY]

2 hours ago, Pippa said:

Thanks Bobby for starting this wonderful thread. I thoroughly enjoyed looking at all the photos and posts.

I took these pics with a $5.00 clip-onto-the-phone toy microscope, so I hope you won't mind the mushy quality of the images and will enjoy the photos anyway.  I'll start with simple crinoid bits found at Lake Michigan beaches.

 

Side of a worn crinoid stem with lovely beeketie growing on it, which are too small to see by eye:

   

 

Here a couple of crinoid columnals with varied center pores:

      

 

And a close-up of a tiny (1cm tall) crinoid calyx (upside down):

 

 

Not bad at all for a $5.00 microscope. Don't ask what I paid for my digital microscope .

 

Tom

[Pippa]

9 hours ago, Bobby Rico said:

Wow no thank you Pippa . Beautiful images and at a bargain price bit of kit. The little  crinoid calyx is beautiful.

 

all the best Bobby 

Very generous, Bobby.

 

Glad you like the crinoid calyx, I do too.   When I first picked it up, I thought I had found another favosite. Later, looking at it closer, I realized that in the absence of any visible vertical tabulate growth, it couldn't possibly be a honeycomb coral and it had to be a crinoid cup. The first one for me, which was very exciting!

It's funny too, once I've found a specific fossil or a part thereof, I typically find more of its type. This has happened in this case as well, as I quickly found another one. Not quite so nicely preserved - parts of it are covered in dolomite - but if I feel brave, I'll try to use an electrical engraver to see if I can safely remove some of that matrix and reveal more of the calyx.

 

[Pippa]

8 hours ago, TOM BUCKLEY said:

 

Not bad at all for a $5.00 microscope. Don't ask what I paid for my digital microscope .

 

Tom

Haha, I can guess. I too bought a digital hand-held scope recently, don't remember the brand. I tried it and while the lenses were much better than my toy - almost no distortion -  it hadn't anywhere near the megapixels of my Iphone, plus the images lacked red. I mean, there was zero red, none, nada. Everything looked like thick yellow-green pea soup. Too far gone to color correct.  So definitely not worth the 320 bucks.  Sadly, I returned it. Now I'm looking at a (hopefully) much better clip on lens, 15x vs. the 30x of my toy and the manufacturer promises the lenses are corrected for true color and minimum distortion. We'll see...wish me luck!

[Tidgy's Dad]

Interior of the pedicle valve of Strophomena planumbona :

 

[Pippa]

21 minutes ago, Tidgy's Dad said:

Interior of the pedicle valve of Strophomena planumbona :

 

Oh wow! That's so cool.

In the background, that small pattern looks like brick construction...

What is the approximate magnification of these images? 

[Tidgy's Dad]

1 hour ago, Pippa said:

Oh wow! That's so cool.

In the background, that small pattern looks like brick construction...

What is the approximate magnification of these images? 

Not a clue, I'm no good at tech at all. 

The muscle attachment area of the hinge in the first photo is about 1 cm across. 

[Pippa]

19 minutes ago, Tidgy's Dad said:

Not a clue, I'm no good at tech at all. 

The muscle attachment area of the hinge in the first photo is about 1 cm across. 

 

23 minutes ago, Tidgy's Dad said:

Not a clue, I'm no good at tech at all. 

The muscle attachment area of the hinge in the first photo is about 1 cm across. 

No need to be :-)

Thanks, you gave me the answer I was looking for.

 

[TOM BUCKLEY]

11 hours ago, Pippa said:

Haha, I can guess. I too bought a digital hand-held scope recently, don't remember the brand. I tried it and while the lenses were much better than my toy - almost no distortion -  it hadn't anywhere near the megapixels of my Iphone, plus the images lacked red. I mean, there was zero red, none, nada. Everything looked like thick yellow-green pea soup. Too far gone to color correct.  So definitely not worth the 320 bucks.  Sadly, I returned it. Now I'm looking at a (hopefully) much better clip on lens, 15x vs. the 30x of my toy and the manufacturer promises the lenses are corrected for true color and minimum distortion. We'll see...wish me luck!

 

Good luck.

 

Tom

[Huntonia]

Today I got a proper phone macro lense with 60x magnification. (This makes the focus very, very, very shallow and annoying) and did my best to get some photos. 

I grabbed my Oklahoma kettneraspis since I have long known it has impressive detail but never been able to photograph it. For a start a cool feature I've seen before on kettneraspis, small additional spines branching off of the genal spine:

And something I haven't seen on other specimens, very small (and impossible to photograph!) holochroal lenses:

You can just barely see the texture on the surface of the eye in this picture, I may keep trying but thanks to the finicky focus I'm afraid I may not be able to do any better.

[Huntonia]

And since I'm having fun here's Odontocephalus aegeria:

And Malvinella buddeae:

[grandpa]

Dear macro-lens affectionados, 

I've started a somewhat related string at

in which I'm looking for advise on what tool to purchase.

Any advice from you folks in the know would sure be welcomed.

[digit]

2 hours ago, Huntonia said:

Today I got a proper phone macro lense with 60x magnification. (This makes the focus very, very, very shallow and annoying) and did my best to get some photos.

That lens looks like it is more trouble than it is worth. The curvature looks terrible as the focal plane does not seem to extend to the corners of the image. Really difficult to photograph something in focus when you can't even get the entire frame in focus. Narrow depth of field (DOF) can be overcome by focus-stacking software. Helicon makes some really great software (but it's not cheap). I hear there are freeware versions of focus stacking software available as well but I can't comment on them as I've never tried them. They can stack multiple images and merge them together to provide a hyper-focused image not easily possible with simple optics. It would be hard when the lens is only focusing on the very center though.

 

1 hour ago, grandpa said:

in which I'm looking for advise on what tool to purchase.

Any advice from you folks in the know would sure be welcomed.

PM me if you want to chat about this topic. I do have opinions.

 

 

Cheers.

 

-KM

[Huntonia]

@digit, I think the issue is really that the lense isn't meant to photograph curved surfaces, it gets really crisp, focused images of flat surfaces. That being said it has focus controls that I'm still trying to figure out and at least some of the focusing issue seems to be with my phone. I may yet get the hang of it but for my initial purposes it seems to work adequately, those eye lenses on the kettneraspis are a nightmare to see under a magnifying glass and downright impossible to photograph without a lense. I may try a different style of lense in the future though.

[digit]

Even with a razor thin depth of field, you may benefit from some focus stacking software. I encourage you to do some research and see what the freeware offerings are like. You just need to be able to take multiple photos with the focal plane varying by just a hair's breadth. Then you can feed these all to the software and by digital black magic an sorcery the software will spit out an image amazingly well focused. 

 

 

Cheers.

 

-Ken

[Bobby Rico]

These beauties was given to me a couple of weeks ago by Doren . The colour are amazing of the shark teeth from Bakersfield. They are understandably treasured. 
 

cheers all 

 

Bobby 

   

 

 

   

 

 

   

 

 

   

 

 

 

   

 

 

   

 

 

[Bobby Rico]

Hi all
 

I thought it be nice to see some more of your beautiful in close up photograph . 
 

I start the thread off again with something I think is very cool. tiny micro Rodent teeth from Melbourne Bone Beds , Florida . They was kindly  given to me by @Pagurus and from matrix that @Sacha found.  Photos where taken with the specimens still in the container because I really like how they are presented and they display nicely in my  collector’s drawers. I did not want to damage it by removing . These are amazing I always really like the tiny secrets that the earth gives up.

Thanks again Mike .
 

all the best Bobby  

 

 

 

 

[digit]

59 minutes ago, Bobby Rico said:

 

I have collected and picked some of the Melbourne Bone Bed micro-matrix. Fascinating stuff with a great diversity of tiny mammal bones and a large number of tiny lizard (Anolis sp.) jaws that I've rarely seen in any other locality.

 

FYI: The chipped end of the rodent incisor is the root end, the beveled end is the occlusal surface. The wear facet is produced by this tooth contacting the opposing incisor while chewing. The anterior (front) and lateral (side) surfaces are covered with enamel, but the posterior (back) is exposed dentin. While the rodent gnaws, the softer dentin wears away leaving the enamel edge like the blade of a chisel.

 

 

Cheers.

 

-Ken

[Bobby Rico]

32 minutes ago, digit said:

FYI: The chipped end of the rodent incisor is the root end, the beveled end is the occlusal surface. The wear facet is produced by this tooth contacting the opposing incisor while chewing. The anterior (front) and lateral (side) surfaces are covered with enamel, but the posterior (back) is exposed dentin. While the rodent gnaws, the softer dentin wears away leaving the enamel edge like the blade of a chisel.

Cheers Ken that is what I thought but I just liked the photo of the root end. Great info anyway much appreciated as I do with all your input to my threads .    Was that mole tooth I coveted that  you shared here form that location? 
 

cheers Bobby 

[digit]

2 minutes ago, Bobby Rico said:

Was that mole tooth I coveted that  you shared here form that location? 

I too have found from the Melbourne Bone bed numerous rodent incisors (not distinctive enough to attribute to species), Cotton Rat (Sigmodon sp.) molars identifiable by the S-shape curvature of the cusps on the occlusal surface, and vole molars with the very zig-zag Z-shape of the occlusal surface and an open root (they keep growing like the incisors and don't have closed roots as seen in the Cotton Rat molars). The mole tooth, however, was an interesting (and thus far) unique find from Cookiecutter Creek.

 

 

    

 

 

Cheers.

 

-Ken

[Bobby Rico]

This tooth is quite lovely if I say so myself 

[Pagurus]

 

15 hours ago, Bobby Rico said:

 Photos where taken with the specimens still in the container because I really like how they are presented and they display nicely in my  collector’s drawers. I did not want to damage it by removing .

 

I'm glad you like them, Bobby. I just want to mention that the little plastic coin holders are attached to the cards with "velcro", and can be removed and reattached, at least in theory. So far, it has worked well for me. The coin holders themselves, though, can be a little difficult to open. I took the photos with a cheap digital microscope, but your photos with the macro lens look great! Keep up the good work! Mike

[Bobby Rico]

8 hours ago, Pagurus said:

 

 

I'm glad you like them, Bobby. I just want to mention that the little plastic coin holders are attached to the cards with "velcro", and can be removed and reattached, at least in theory. So far, it has worked well for me. The coin holders themselves, though, can be a little difficult to open. I took the photos with a cheap digital microscope, but your photos with the macro lens look great! Keep up the good work! Mike

Cheers Mike . I do like them a lot,  I like little things I don’t why I just do  .  The look with the coin case on the well designed  card, really pleased the graphics designer in me too.   

[RuMert]

Some of my mini-fossils:

 

[RuMert]

 

 

 

[Bobby Rico]

@RuMert wow nice photos. 

 

I had to zoom in into this one it is a beauty  .

Thanks for adding to my thread.