Photography of three dimensional objects of less than 1.0 mm using a microscope or bellows can be quite challenging. While this program concentrates on the use of bellows to obtain quality photography, the optical and photographic principles involved apply as well to the use of a low power microscope. Exposure, lighting, color balance, diffraction and depth-of-field all affect the quality of the final image and can be controlled. Digital imaging is rapidly replacing the use of film and with the availability of composite focus software, exceptional images can be obtained using point-and-shoot digital cameras attached to either low or high power microscopes.

Bio Sketch
Dan Behnke of Northbrook, Illinois has been collecting and photographing microminerals since 1973. Microminerals are mineral crystals that require magnification through a microscope for viewing. Typically the crystals are less than 2.0 millimeters and special photographic equipment is required to photograph them.

He has a collection of microminerals which numbers over 14,000 specimens representing over 750 species from numerous localities throughout the world. His photographs of the collection are used to present illustrated programs on mineralogy to a variety of groups across the United States and Canada.

His photographs are also used to illustrate articles appearing in periodicals such as The Mineralogical Record, Earth Science, Rocks and Minerals, and Mineralien Welt and Lapis (both in German). A number of his photos also appeared in the second edition (1990) of The Encyclopedia of Minerals published by Van Nostrand Reinhold; in The Handbook of Microminerals published in 1993 by The Mineralogical Record; in the third edition (1995) of The Mineralogy of Arizona published by the University of Arizona Press; and in the 1997 edition of The Minerals of Colorado published by the Colorado Chapter of the Friends of Mineralogy.

Dan is the author of “Copper Country Microminerals”, an illustrated article on the minerals of the Upper Peninsula of Michigan which appeared in the July, 1983 issue of The Mineralogical Record. He also authored “Photomacrography of Microminerals” which appeared in the November, 1991 issue of the same periodical.

Tom Rosemeyer, author of the “Through the Scope” column which appears in Rocks and Minerals interviewed Dan for an illustrated article about his micromineral collection and his photography for the March, 1991 issue.

Dan is an Associate Photographer of both The Mineralogical Record and Rocks and Minerals magazines. He was a member of the Board of Directors of the Friends of Mineralogy from 1990 to 1993. He served as the micromount chairman of the Midwest Federation from 1981 to 1988 and has served several terms as chairman of the micromount study group of the Earth Science Club of Northern Illinois (ESCONI).

He has been a guest lecturer on photomacrography at Columbia College, Chicago, Illinois. He also has contributed over 3,000 images to a forthcoming DVD on minerals to be published by the Los Angeles (CA) County Museum. February 2005.

SMSI Minutes 18 Nov. 2005 Dan Behnke
Dan Behnke gave a short history of micromineral photography, (Floyd Getzinger c. 1950 and Gardner Gregory c. 1968). Behnke has been the mainstay since. With the switch to digital cameras, images are better but they require more work. Calibration and depth of fields require more attention. Capturing white on white and black on black requires changing the light source. The position of a mineral crystal to the film plane is also important to give a true image of the xcrystal. A new digital feature is composite focus which may require twelve or more images all with a different distances between the sample and image plane. The images are then combined using a computer program to use the best focus of each picture. Mineral specimens were used to illustrate the many types of problems.

Respectfully submitted. Stan Schmidt, Rec. Sec.