Lake Superior Rocks & Gems

The Steemit Life is serious business so I bring you another beautiful agate to enjoy. I've been trying to post these every day but as you can see it's gotten difficult. Now that my agate posts have fully evolved into amazing articles, they do consume quite a bit of time. Time that sometimes I don't have. Whether I'm stuck getting business calls or at a friends house. Working out every day is using up a lot of time too.

The other day I was up all night and all morning. I had to drive my wife to an appointment and then to her work to turn in a Doctors note. As tired as I was, I still managed to get out of the car and search for agates in the rock beds outside her work while I waited for her to come back out. It was well worth it because i found at least 3 agates and brought home about 10 interesting rocks. Here's the big agate I found that day. Since this was my first agate hunt of the month, this is the agate of the month so far, much less the agate of the day. Not super big, but certainly bigger than a lot of the small ones I share.

Lights Off

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Through the 60mm Macro Lens

I knew this agate was going to shine bright. I feel like the quartz in the middle helps spread the light throughout the whole rock because the whole that the light is coming out of is smaller than a penny.

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No Shine

I skipped the Jewelers Loupe in the last segment because all the pictures came out terrible. I am actually phasing out the jewelers loupe. It's tedious and with 24 MP and a 6000 x 4000 pixel image, cropping is more effective then the jewelers loupe, so I am thinking this will be the last post that will include loupe pictures. The quality of the macro lens is so much better!

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Through a Jewelers Loupe 40X25 mm - No Shine

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Shine

The size of this rock gave it so much unbelievable character. You really can't see much detail with out shine. It's crazy how much it changes. I also washed it with soap before I added the oil, so after washing some dirt away I could see a lot of detail! My wife says there's always people hunting for agates at her works rock beds. I can't believe people passed this one up!

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Through the 60mm Macro Lens

Through a Jewelers Loupe 40X25 mm - Shine

So this is probably going to be the last group of pictures that I upload using the Jewelers Loupe. It was good while it lasted, but it's becoming more tedious every time. It's mostly because I have to struggle with the focus of the camera plus the focus of the loupe. The slightest movement of either while I'm holding the loupe with one hand and the camera with the other, and the picture comes out blurred. It's just not worth it anymore and I've realized I can get the same exact effect with the macro lens, so begone jewelers loupe! This doesn't mean I don't have a use for it. I still use it to help me find errors in coins when I search through rolls of coins.

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How Big is it?

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Flashlight Settings	ISO 100 35 mm f/4.5 1/100 sec
Settings both Lights Off & On	ISO 800 55 mm f/5.6 1/50 sec
Camera	Nikon D3400 24 MP
Lens	AF-P DX NIKKOR 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6G VR
Lens	AF-S Micro NIKKOR 60mm 1:2.8 G ED
Location	Superior, WI

Fun Fact: I took a total of 182 pictures of this rock bring you the best quality! It takes me about 45 minutes to take the pictures, another 45 minutes to pick the best ones and re-scale them, plus another 20-30 minutes to make the post!

I really love sharing these agate photo's with you all. The quality of this Nikon just blows me away and it makes me feel good that they come out this perfect. I am still using manual focus when I take the pictures with the lights off because auto focus tells me it's too dark. With the lights on, I use Auto Focus now and I am consistently taking 150+ less pictures each round. It's also set to Vivid so that the colors stand out a little more.

^{Taken on 4/24/18}