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Tynessa,
Amazon has quite a range of copy stands from under $100 to many thousands of dollars. You get what you pay for though. The more you pay, the more stable the stand. I use an inexpensive stand myself that I weight with sandbags to improve stability. An advantage of a copy stand over a tripod is that the camera is pointed down so it is easier to position your specimen for photography.
I used to use a professional grade tripod before I got the copy stand. This tripod had an accessory outrigger that replaced the pan-tilt head. The pan-tilt head was then attached to the end of the outrigger so the camera could be pointed straight down. This set-up would be pretty costly so it probably isn’t an option. I don’t believe the low end tripods have this kind of accessory.
Jack
Jack you are totally right, but Tynessa there are also tripods out there that have the ability to pull down the camera to point down the focus to your object … it really depends on your budget
regards
Ronny
Ronny,
I haven’t seen anything here in a while, what’s going on with your tutorial?
Also, I have started doing my first work with whitened fossil photography for a potential paper I am working on. Hopefully this will work out well. I am using the ammonium chloride method I described in an earlier post. This coating washes off with water. Your MgO method would be easier in some ways but having to brush off the coating could damage the fossils I am working with.
Jack
Hey Jack @jkallmeyer,
thanks for asking for the progress in producing the photo tutorial. I am on it after a lot of traveling the last few weeks. I recently launched the other tutorials about cleaning fossils. That way I realized that we have some issues with the video quality. It is somehow a bit blurry and the voice sound is just at the right channel (mic problem). I would like to solve that problem for the upcoming tutorials. I was also involved in some film production for the other major project I am working for, iDigBio, where we give also specific advice for the digitization of biocollections. That movie is more addressed to professional collections but I would like to take some of the methods we explained there for the photo tutorials of myFOSSIL. So stay tuned. I am furthermore interested in your results whitening tiny objects. Can you present some objects to our community?
regards
Ronny
Ronny,
Where are your other tutorials? Are they on this site somewhere? I’d like to check them out.
I’ll upload some whitened images in a later post.
Jack
Hey Jack,
@jkallmeyer, you can find them under the annotations … just click the myFOSSIL logoRonny,
I have a couple of comments about the cleaning tutorials if you don’t mind.
1) They are way too hard to find on the website. Even though you told me where to go, it took me a while to figure out I had to scroll down a ways to locate them. There was a statement associated with one of the tutorials that said they could be found under resources – I could not find them there. These should be much easier to find if we want people to benefit from them. Maybe this is just my inexperience in using this site.
2) In the first tutorial you show washing a fossil pectin in a sink under running water. That is ok if you have a lab sink with a sediment trap. Otherwise, the home fossil cleaner will find themselves with a $100 plumbing bill after their drains are clogged with sediment. Around here we use a bucket of water that can be dumped in the yard or street later. The bucket also allows us to soak the fossils at least over night so the final cleaning is easier.
3) I found the music to be enjoyable but way too loud so that it competes with your instructions for attention. I think the music could be limited to the introduction but eliminated during your instructions.
4) The instructions themselves were good and I can see that you will probably have additional tutorials for cleaning fossils from other areas with different preservation.
I hope these comments are helpful.
Jack
Hey Jack, @jkallmeyer, thank you for your comments. I really appreciate your interaction, that way we can make things more user friendly. Ok first I will fix the problem with the implementation to the website. You are totally right, it is hard to find at the moment. I will also change the part with the sink or add at least a comment to be careful with the sediments that might clog your sinks drain. I also annotated that it will be the easiest way to clean them in field in a river, creek or ocean. The other comment about the music is a real problem that just came up after the upload to youtube. Like I said, something happened with the sound channels. I am about to fix this as well.
ok that is it so far, thank you again for your help
best regards
Ronny
Hey guys, this is an annotation for all the people interested in photography. like @jkallmeyer, @tmorgan, @sgalligher etc. We just had a look at some options to use your smart phone even better for good imaging. The K12 forum was just talking about a very cool tool to upgrade your phone. @bmacfadden, @llundgren, @dellingson. Maybe engaged folks like @lcone, @cferrara, @lmccall, @dkrisher or @robertross can make an announcement for their clubs and recommend such tools. It’s a quite affordable opportunity to get better images just with your phone. Ahhh … here is what we are talking about:
https://www.olloclip.com or these:
http://www.amazon.com/Mpow-Clip-On-Supreme-Fisheye-Smartphones/dp/B00QXT58JA/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top?ie=UTF8please spread the idea … we really like it
ok guys, now you can find all the tutorials under the resources section … sorry for having problems finding them
Ronny,
Thanks for taking care of the tutorials. Having everything under resources will make it much easier to locate these and any new ones you come up with.
Regarding the cell phone accessories, I had not been aware of any of these items. Very interesting. I’d like to see a critical review comparing image quality of these under $40 lenses with one taken with a $500 macro lens on a real camera though. Maybe that can be a part of your tutorial…
Jack
Jack,@jkallmeyer
actually it was Eleanor who was in charge of that. We are closely working together to make the website more functional and user friendly. I was just forwarding your wishes 😉Concerning the extra macro cell phone lenses I would suggest that the quality of a 500$ Pro lens is way better but we have to think about that not everybody is able to spend that much money just for a lens. We invite everybody to be part of this community and as long as we can help to make the quality of images better even with not so expensive tools (40-70$ is still a lot of money, it depends on your pocket) we would like to do it. But you are right it might be very interesting to find out how good these accessories are compared with the pro stuff, maybe it will be a big surprise and we all can safe a lot of money 😉
so stay tuned for upcoming output
btw: I have fixed the sound problem and will upload it soon … hopefully it will make it easier to follow my instructions …
regards
Ronny
Hey Forum members,
a very important part of imaging fossils and first step is cleaning my fossils … we have just uploaded two video tutorials with some advice that might help you getting clean fossils. I also added some nice tricks to create simple but useful preparation tools etc.
find it under resources or at the announcement page
have fun and give us feedback
@tmorgan, @jkallmeyer, @sgalligher, @lcone, @cferrara, @lmccall, @dkrisherHello Folks, since I will be out of town and country over the holidays I would like to wish everybody a peaceful and harmonic Christmas and a good start in the year 2016. I hope that you liked our work and believe that you can help us to make everything a little bit better, step by step.
Thank you for your attendance, this project is because of you!!!
Merry Christmas
Ronny
@tmorgan, @jkallmeyer, @sgalligher, @lcone, @cferrara, @lmccall, @dkrisher, @robertrossRonny,
I have been wanting to send some replies but had problems with the site. All seems fixed now.
I am going to attach a photo that my son took with his cell phone. It is taken with a close up attachment similar to those you suggested earlier. It is a different one that is actually more expensive. You can clearly see some pretty bad spherical aberration on this shot with the close up lens attachment. The particular product is: Camkix Universal 3 in 1 Cell Phone Camera Lens Kit – Fish Eye Lens / 2 in 1 Macro Lens & Wide Angle Lens / Universal Clip (Black) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00CSJ50HY/ref=cm_sw_r_other_awd_9VcCwb7BEDGKS
Jack
@jkallmeyer, Hey Jack, I hope you had peaceful holidays. I would like to see the picture taken with the smart phone lens. Can you upload it to the fossil list? I guess that the bad spherical aberration is the prize you would have to pay with such a setup. Can you make a photo from a grid to see how strong the spherical aberration is? That would help a lot. I would furthermore like to see a pic from the same grid with a Pro camera to verify. Can you do that? That would be great. Thank you!
All the best
Ronny
Ronny,
@Rleder Unable to post photos to the site at this time. I’ll try whenever that gets fixed.Jack
Merry Christmas to you too Ronny! We had some organizational changes and I am taking over the youth group. I am planning to put photography on the list. I also have a clip on microscope for the field. I got mine at $5 Below months ago and have never seen another one since. It fits my tablet and phone even with the case on. The images were from the first time that I used it. You can zoom in the camera function on your phone and then attach the clip.
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