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Scanned images


I asked a while back about photographing meteorites and got some good
advice, and I'm awaiting the next Meteorite! magazine where this topic
is featured.

Someone also suggested scanning slices and I've found that this works
very well. I have an HP 4C ScanJet which has been calibrated for
my monitor, and I've scanned some of my recent purchases from Tucson.
The color is very faithful (on my monitor) and I made some slight
gamma adjustments or brightness adjustments to show off some surface
details that are not so obvious, but there is no color enhancement
or generic sharpening.

I just put the slice on the scanner with a ruler, and cover it with a
white sheet of paper; scan at 300 dpi, and make some slight gamma
adjustments for Netscape. I remove the ruler and replace it with a 1 inch
reference mark (maybe I should switch to cm.?) with Photoshop. The
marks are accurate to within a few pixels.

The results you can see at my web:
    http://www.arachnaut.org/meteor/photos.html >

The Esquel and Imilac show the way they do because the scanner light
is so bright and illuminates deep into the olivine. I didn't alter
the color in any way on these - that's how they look!

The Dar al Gani 319 has been enhanced a bit to show off the detail,
that one has true color, but that's probably what it would look like
under thousands of watts of lighting. The brightness and contrast are
a bit exaggerated.

The Ibitira (my wife calls it 'Itsy-Bitsy') is a very faithful
rendition, exact color match. Looks like a piece of burnt toast.
I plan to take some pictures of the tunnels shortly using Michael
Blood's Russian stereoscope (this is an interesting machine, not at
all like an American product, built like a tank, and with very fine
optics).

The Tatahouine is very faithful, but the Mt. Egerton is a little
more red than my eyes see. I tried to adjust the color to be a bit
more orange-ish, but finally gave up, just use your imagination.
There must be a red color sensitivity in the scanner that escapes
it's calibration process.

These make excellent desktop wallpaper, feel free to copy! But if you
make any money from these you owe me a beer.

-- 
    Jim Hurley         mailto:hurleyj@arachnaut.org
 Arachnaut's Lair    http://www.arachnaut.org/ >