How to Take Great Pictures of Your Mineral Specimens

Whether you want to sell some minerals on eBay or just want to keep track of your mineral collection, taking photographs of your mineral specimens is an important job. Accurate pictures will make your buyers know what the mineral really looks like and keep them from returning an item due to it not looking like the picture. It will also make your job of organizing your minerals easier and less frustrating since you can look at the picture and know exactly what the item is. If you have really nice pictures they might even be used in school books or rock guides, or other sources of information that will show your photograph to thousands.

Difficulty: Moderately Easy

Instructions

Things You'll Need:

• Mineral specimen
• Camera
• Table
• Background
• Tripod (opt)
• Photo editing software (opt)

1. 
   Collecting minerals

   Take the pictures in the natural setting of the mineral. If you are collecting the mineral out in the field, often a picture of you digging it out works great. It shows the hard work and the excitement of finding minerals, and documents the conditions as well. Even if you are going to take more professional pictures of your minerals later, a few action shots really can tell a story.

2. 
   Dirty, badly photographed minerals

   Clean and prepare the minerals properly. Unless you are trying to document how bad the mineral looks, make sure the specimen cleaned and prepared properly before taking photographs of it. Pictures of dirty, unpolished mineral specimens look unprofessional.

3. 
   Labeled collection

   Decide if you want to label your minerals. Labels make it easier to tell at a glance exactly what the picture is of and where the mineral was collected. They show all the details very clearly. They make the picture appear a bit unprofessional though and take away from the elegance of the mineral. Whether or not to add labels to your pictures really depends on what you want to use the pictures for.

4. 
   A bad background makes all minerals look bad

   Prepare a good background for your mineral specimens. The background really will determine how nice the mineral picture looks. Even if you do nothing else, try and stick something underneath and behind the mineral specimen that will create a solid color surrounding. Just about anything will work. Poster board is great; I’ve even used a sheet. Just something that will make the mineral specimen stand out.
   
   Also, make sure the background color the correct color for that mineral specimen. Contrasting colors is nice, but make sure they aren’t too extreme. A white crystal with a black background will not show up well. Complimentary colors are usually best. Mid-tone gray works for most shades if you plan on photographing several mineral specimens in a row. A white background is good for light colored minerals.

5. 
   Badly lit mineral photograph

   Take photographs in a well-lit area. Gentle natural light is best to avoid harsh shadows or glares, but if you don’t have a well-lilt room you need to make one. Using several lamps, light up the area. Try to use natural color light bulbs since the yellows and blues make the minerals look bad. Bounce the lights off of nearby walls until you get a gentle, non-harsh light illuminating the mineral specimen. You want to avoid using your flash if at all possible since it causes glare off the minerals usually and will not allow you close enough to the mineral to capture detail.

6. 
   At eye level with a specimen

   Align yourself with the mineral specimen properly. Set the mineral on a table and get down to its level. Then, try and get close, you want the mineral to fill most of the screen.

7. 
   Badly focused mineral specimen

   Understand the settings on your camera. Automatic is the setting most often used for cameras, but it doesn’t work very well on minerals usually. It’s best to set the camera to macro focus, so you can get close and immediate with the crystal and have the camera still focus. Macro is usually represented by a flower icon on your settings tab. Most cameras will at the very least have a macro setting, so even if yours looks completely automatic you will want to check and see if you have it. If the camera is very complicated you might want to at least glance through the manual to see if you can adjust it to take the best picture of your mineral specimens.

8. 
   Fuzzy picture created by not using a tripod

   Use a tripod. If you have one, use your tripod. A tripod will steady your camera and allow you take a picture without the minute shaking that can ruin a shot and make it fuzzy. If you don’t have a tripod, consider picking up a small one to take the pictures. Small, ten to twelve inch high tripods are very inexpensive and really make it easier to get those shots crystal clear.

9. 
   The pen shows how large this mineral specimen is

   Add something to the photograph for size comparison. Anything generic, that most people will have seen and know what size it is works well. Minerals vary greatly in size and photographs make it very difficult to tell how big or small something is. A pen works well, as the picture on the left shows; a pocket knife is good; common coins are nice for small minerals; a ruler works great. It doesn’t really matter what you use though as long as people can tell the size of the mineral specimen in the picture by looking at the comparison item.

10. 
    I took many pictures of this one mineral specimen

    Take lots of shots. Unless you are an expert photographer, you will not capture the best image in the first photograph. Take several, from different angles, and you will likely get one or two that will be just what you’re looking for. Remember, it costs you nothing to even fill up the entire memory card in your camera. We aren’t dealing with film anymore, if you get a picture you don’t like you can just hit the delete button. So take lots of pictures to get the perfect one.

11. 
    A great mineral specimen photograph

    Use photo editing software. After taking the pictures, use a photo editing software such as Photoshop to make your pictures look great. You may even have one on your computer and not even know it. Most digital cameras come with some sort of photo editing software. Use it to crop the image so the mineral fills the screen and alter the lighting so the mineral looks like what it really looks like. You can even rotate and change the angle of the picture. Just experiment to make your great shot look as good as it can be.

[kittycooks]

on 6/25/2009 Nice photos and explanation of taking pictures of mineral specimens!