Well, Macro-Rughy was nice, but take a picture of a stone of brazilian transparent quartz deep filled by laser light is much better! Here the result and the technical notes, equipment and procedure.

Note the path of principal laser ray (wavelenght 630-680 nm):

[update: this photo had participated at Photo Friday in 03-18-05 ‘Glow’ challenge as link n.473 ]

Some technical notes:

• Focal lenght: 17 mm
• F-Number: F/4,9
• Exposure: 8 seconds
• ISO: ISO-100

Equipment: a tripod (for mechanical stability), two sheets of paper (as background), a spot light, patience.

Procedure: first regulate F-Number and exposure in a dark room, then turn on a spot light to regulate the focus (it isn’t possibile for a camera to calibrate focus in the dark), finally turn off the light and press the shutter button.

Some granulation of image is perfectly natural first because of the lack of light, second for a little imperfection of quartz’s crystal. Anyway the result is beautiful, like one can see in this detail:

It seems a stellar field or is it my professional deviation?

Today I’ve learn to use the Macro and Super Macro functions. Taking close-up pictures of small things is called “macro photography” and allow to see a large number of small particulars. Like my stone-made turtle called “Rughy” framed in my Zen garden made of white sand:

Meanwhile I was taking the picture, she (the turtle) was climbing a fragment of solid lava coming from Mt. Etna (Sicily).

The following is the same picture blowed up. One can touch the power of Macro and 5Mega pixels that allow to see some Rughy age wrinkles and some grains of sand with a great definition:

What do you want to know about me? First I’m a student of Astrophysics and I attend the Rome’s University “La Sapienza” .

In this cold morning of Rome (3°C), I had to go to study for the Astronomy’s exam, and I stopped my walk just for a moment, only to shot this picture of the Minerva’s statue into the University.

There is the “Biblioteca Alessandrina” (Alexander’s Library) on the background.

Today is the first day of life of this blog. It’s born the same day when I have bought my first digital camera: a Konica Minolta Dimage G530. Remember this day!

To celebrate this event, she (the camera) would like to photograph herself. She’s vain. That’s the photonik result: