In the last month I made an investment in a new camera. Previously, all my pictures have been using my iPad. The iPad is not an awful photo-taking device, but it does have its limitations when taking macros, and any of the add-on apps like Camera+ only make a small difference in quality. There are very small trilobites or details thereof that could really use a more effective camera.
And so I am now the proud owner of an Olympus TG-5. I won't list all the neat features as that can easily be Googled, but it also very conveniently doubles as a great and rugged field camera. The other feature, relevant to fossils, is its micro/macro functionality. The micro has an in-built photo-stacking feature to resolve issues of depth of field (the closer one zooms on an object, the more radial blur occurs -- something stacking fixes). When I take a very close-up image using the stacking, the camera takes multiple shots at slightly different angles and depths, and flattens the crispest aspects into one image. So I took it out for a bit of a trial run on some trilobites: Nice, crisp closeups. Just to give a sense of scale, the agnostids in the second picture are only a few millimetres long. Next are two images of the same trilobite (Eldredgeops rana) at different zoom levels: Overall, much better than using the iPad. The camera was not cheap, but I'm quite pleased that it will be able to serve a useful function for more than just once a year when I'm in Jamaica.
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Kane Faucher
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February 2024
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