Salt Grains

Here’s an every-day thing that looks pretty cool when heavily magnified: salt! Your standard table salt, nothing special about it. Each of these grains of salt measure an average of around 350 microns across (0.35mm), and their photographed on the side of a black porcelain coffee mug.

This was focus-stacked handheld, but I probably would have been better off using focus rails and studio equipment to get this image. That said, the image was taken purely out of curiosity. 58 frames in total were used to focus stack this image using Photoshop and editing techniques very similar to those used in my snowflake work.

I’m sure there are plenty of other household items that take on a certain level of fascination under a microscope (or a high-powered macro lens).

This is the setup for the shot. Fairly simplistic, the salt is sprinkled on the surface of a mug turned on its side. This gives me the possibility of reflections and depth in the scene. Not complicated, but it can take a little outside-the-box thinking and experimenting to build it.