Thank you, David, Dan, Alan and Larry for your comments.
Alan, I forgot to write, this was epsom (not Epson :-) ) salt, which is
a hydrated magnesium sulfate.
Larry, the idea of a polarizer is interesting one, but in the current
situation it would require some contraption for the polarized light, - to
hold a polarizer in front of a light source. And I am not quite sure if I
actually have one: I suspect I might have only one polarizer.
Igor
Alan C Mon, 19 Oct 2020 22:01:00 -0700 wrote:
Very nice, Igor. You took me back! We did something like that with Copper
Sulphate when our kids were at school. The crystals were quite big but,
sadly, not photographed.
Alan C
lrc Mon, 19 Oct 2020 23:02:13 -0700 wrote:
Very cool.
I suspect that you might have some success with polarizing both the source
light and the camera. You also might want to arrange it so that the
crystal
face "reflects" a black background rather than the source light.
On Mon, 19 Oct 2020, Igor PDML-StR wrote:
Back in May, sitting at home, we did some scientific experiments:
we grew salt crystals, and then I quickly took a few photos that the kiddo
could show to her virtual class.
This is the most "photogenic" crystal
http://42graphy.org/misc/2020-05-18-crystals/_IR04043.html
However, it is actually polycrystalline (you can see crystallites of a
different crystalline orientation), and it was a "byproduct".
The main crystal is monocrystalline (except maybe some junk at the edge):
http://42graphy.org/misc/2020-05-18-crystals/_IR04034.html
This was not a big photography project, the photographs were taken quickly on
the kitchen table (a last-minute thought).
The biggest challenge with photographing crystals was choosing the light and
its direction to highlight the crystal planes.
I would expect that lighting techniques used by Mark C. while photographing
his snowflakes would be useful for this type of subject, even though these
crystals are macroscopic, unlike the snowflakes.
All comments are welcome!
Igor
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