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[Asianfire]

Look what I'm playing with!!! for a change.
Looked for some eyes for my Halloween project and started to rub down some opal That Ian Bell send me some years ago.
Only to uncover colour after colour. The pic on the left is outdoor just before rain. So while not in focus basically the worst colour those little things show.
The rest taken indoor with flash. The one on the right is the smallest, but needs a lot more shaping to qualify as a cab.
Very small buggers, all 5 together are just about 1.5 ct.



Going crazy taking pics of nephrite. Must have taken a good 500 of the lizard by now, and not one picture where the focus is clean on the whole piece.



Ghost for challenge playing same trick on camera



And Ohh yeah, the coral-piece is done too



Thanks for looking, Kurt

[Jhon P]

Lizard is outstanding.  I am not the one to
Give advice on photography but is the camera trying to focus on the background. It may see the white as background, like the sky. Try Manuel focus maybe. My problem Is I am Lazy and use my iPhone
 I am still working on my rattle snake. Thinking about the head, I do a little at a time , I have to be in the mood to carve

[jerrysg]

I may be telling you something that you already know but here goes.  The lack of sharpness in the photos of the lizard may be due to shooting with too large (smaller numbers) a lens aperture setting.  The larger the lens opening, the shallower the depth of field.  i.e. only a small slice of the picture is in sharp focus. Professionals now use a technique called "focus stacking" to take macro photographs that are totally in focus.  It is done by taking a series of photographs, moving the specimen or the camera by an infinitesimal amount between shots. Each shot has only a slice of the object perfectly in focus. Then specialty software takes over and combines all the photographs in such a way that only the in-focus part of each shot is used.

One solution is to set your camera to Aperture Priority and then select a small aperture, either f11 or f16. Don't set it for the smallest lens opening available because characteristics of lenses cause them to introduce aberrations at their smallest lens setting. Using f11 or f16 as your aperture will cause the camera to call for longer exposure times. This will require the use of a tripod or a stable surface for anything longer than 1/60 second.  Let the camera decide the exposure for the first shot and then adjust as necessary. You can shorten the exposure time by increasing the ISO setting.  Increasing ISO (or film speed for those of us who started with film cameras) does increase noise (random pixels) in the photo so probably don't go higher than ISO 400.  One other thing for maximum sharpness in the photos.  Either use a remote shutter release or set the camera for a delay after you push the button.  The delay (2 or 12 seconds on my camera) was designed to allow you to set up the camera, push the button and then run to get in the picture.  In this case, it is used to allow any vibration caused by pushing the shutter button to vanish before the camera takes the picture.

Hope this helps.

Jerry

[Asianfire]

Yeah, I know. I got a good camera, yet only little patience to go through a manual to really find out in theory what is possible with it.
Stubborn that way. :) :) But it buggs me that my phone gets often better results....... :) :)

[rockjunquie]

But it buggs me that my phone gets often better results....... :) :)

I'm seeing that with a lot phone cameras. Some of them take really great pictures! Tommy uses a phone camera. I'm always amazed.

Another thing you can do is focus on something close to the object by pressing the button half way down, then move the focus to your object without letting go of the button. That helps sometimes, esp with light objects. (I hope I got that right, it's been a while.)

I like that little ghost and of course, I'm a fan of your coral sculptures. What a great medium.

[irockhound]

WOW!  I think I love the lizard even more than the snakes and I thought those were awesome.  I am inspired when I see your carvings!!!!  Keep going.   How was that retreat of yours into the peaceful cabin/house your friend had.  It looked like such a great place to meditate on life.

[domdeslagons]

really cool, as usual!
I like the coral gecko!

[Asianfire]

WOW!  I think I love the lizard even more than the snakes and I thought those were awesome.  I am inspired when I see your carvings!!!!  Keep going.   How was that retreat of yours into the peaceful cabin/house your friend had.  It looked like such a great place to meditate on life.

Thank you. Retreat went better than expected. Talking to one owner of another small building that is dilapidated as the owner is to old to maintain it himself, and no-one in the family who has any interest. So I'm hoping a for a long-term lease for a nominal amount, in return for renovating and upkeep of the building. Contracts are still a long way off, but have started carrying cement in, so I could start fixing it up as soon as an agreement has been reached.

For those of you interested and with FB here are pictures of what I'm up to:    https://www.facebook.com/kainzer.kurt/media_set?set=a.10154077140134436.1073741892.582189435&type=3&pnref=story