Pepper'N'Salt

Some freshly ground pepper sprinkled with some salt - looks like that seen very close:

Approx. 7:1 magnification and a MFT sensor -  that means that the original width of what you see here is around 2.5 mm. Picture is uncropped. 133 shots taken with an OM-1, 60mm macro on a 2x TC and an added Raynox 202.

Salt really comes in lots of shapes and patterns out of my shaker; here an impressionistic stack of some salt on blue paper.  Same setup and magnification as above, but only 86 shots in this stack:

I also made a "full" stack of this last pic, but having the background also in focus didn't look nice at all. At this magnification the structure of paper is very distracting, so I opted for a more shallow DOF with fewer pictures stacked.

Phil

Nice shaped crystals are always fascinating.

3D Gunner wrote:

Nice shaped crystals are always fascinating.

Aren't they? Have to admit that your fine salt pics made me curious, so I had to look what came out of our kitchen salt shaker.

Thanks for your comment!

Phil

jim mij wrote:

hmm, i like the salt in pic 1, and the blue background in pic 2, in my head its a more pleasing picture

See what you mean, Jim. The salt crystals are better defined in #1, but the grounded pepper doesn't come out that good. On the other hand the salt "pebbles" in #2 are a bit too uniform (at least the "big three" in the central part of the image). Hope to find the time to experiment further with some "salt on blue".

Thanks for looking and for your kind feedback, Jim!

Phil

# 1 for me all the way Phil, it clearly shows the NaCl divisions ready to pounce all over the Pepper vis a vis the Battle of the Palette. The size of the armored salt formations are ominous.

Rodger in Edmonton wrote:

# 1 for me all the way Phil, it clearly shows the NaCl divisions ready to pounce all over the Pepper vis a vis the Battle of the Palette. The size of the armored salt formations are ominous.

Astoundingly well said, Rodger! You seem to be a master of the words too, not only of photography.

Thanks very much for your comment - much appreciated.

Phil

Pepper and salt again, this time with a blue paper background in focus. IMO here the structure of the paper fiber combines well with the condiments:

And here some thyme together with sweet paprika. Interesting how "hairy" the thyme is:

Both pics again at 7:1 taken on a MFT sensor, so "real" size is approx. 2.5mm horizontal. Uncropped. Stacked of course.

Phil

Joseph S Wisniewski wrote:

philzucker wrote:

Salt really comes in lots of shapes and patterns out of my shaker;

The weird thing is that it doesn’t.

Common table salt is sodium chloride (NaCl) aka "halite". It forms face centered cubic crystals that are very distinctive.

The most common "salt substitute" is potassium chloride (KCl) aka "sylvite", which also forms face centered cubic crystals.

Even the less common sodium malate (Na2(C2H4O(COO)2)) forms cubic crystals.

You’ve got a lot of cuboctahedrons. Nothing edible that I can think of forms those. Very pretty, but I'd be scared to eat it.

No need to be scared, I think. It's table salt coming out of our salt shaker that is filled with standard issue salt bought at a standard supermarket. NaCl with 31mg fluoride and 2 mg of iodine per 100 grams of salt (just looked at the package). Nothing else. It looks like that magnified - AFAIK it's ground, so that may explain the shapes it shows here.

Phil

I now switched to a bit less magnification by replacing the Raynox 202 with a Raynox 250 - giving approx. 4.5:1 (4mm "real width" on the horizontal of the m43 sensor). Here basic sharpness is better and needs almost no additional sharpening in PP.

With different lighting setups I got those three today - all uncropped.

#1: Thyme, a lot of sweet paprika & two grains of salt.

#2: Thyme on its own, with only one grain of salt (find it!),

#3: Thyme, sweet paprika and a half grain of salt ...

Phil

You are on the right path according to my photographic  Truppenfuhrung  --

Be cautious of too many elements in the field that can obscure the main objective.

In Combined Arms Ops with different color and style of formations,this can lead to the appearance of a busy battlefield buthazy objectives. A decisive target point in the field of view can help the viewer establish the  precise goal of the operation.

Overall combined spice operations appear to be proceeding very well across the entire front  - carry on =- keep objectives clear in each battle.

Think Austerlitz

If I take an overhead picture - the Pratzen Heights will be the clear subject, if I move my camera a further down from the heights, and do not include the heights, I find masses of engaged troops but its very  hard to see Napoleon's  master plan - include the heights and the melee at the bottom , the right flank , the left flank etc all make sense in the picture..

Note from GHQ: Those pesky geology  mineral formations are giving us trouble any help is appreciated.

Keep up the great work

Best Regards, Rodger
Save Lives - Be an Organ or Stem Cell Donor.
Quaecumque vera

Joseph S Wisniewski wrote:

philzucker wrote:

Joseph S Wisniewski wrote:

philzucker wrote:

Salt really comes in lots of shapes and patterns out of my shaker;

The weird thing is that it doesn’t.

Common table salt is sodium chloride (NaCl) aka "halite". It forms face centered cubic crystals that are very distinctive.

The most common "salt substitute" is potassium chloride (KCl) aka "sylvite", which also forms face centered cubic crystals.

Even the less common sodium malate (Na2(C2H4O(COO)2)) forms cubic crystals.

You’ve got a lot of cuboctahedrons. Nothing edible that I can think of forms those. Very pretty, but I'd be scared to eat it.

No need to be scared, I think.

I'll give you one, maybe.

It's table salt coming out of our salt shaker that is filled with standard issue salt bought at a standard supermarket. NaCl with 31mg fluoride and 2 mg of iodine per 100 grams of salt (just looked at the package). Nothing else.

Definitely something else.

Neither iodine nor fluoride can substantially alter the shape of salt crystals. But after a little research, I found that there's something commonly added to salt that does. Glycine is added to reduce "caking" by distorting the natural cubic crystals.

Glycine (NH2CH2COOH) affects salt crystal growth dramatically by causing edges not to form at all (near spherical "blobby" crystals) or having edges and corners spawn less acute edges, which is how you end up with cuboctehedrons. This eliminates large faces that can provide sufficient surface area for crystals to fuse.

Now, glycine supplements have been linked to anxiety, but that's in dosages measured in grams, so you probably don't have to worry about a mg or two in your 2000mg daily dose of salt.

Thanks for that info!

I re-checked and have to admit that under another heading a fourth ingridient was listed, and that is sodium ferrocyanide (Na4[Fe(CN)6]). It is used as anticaking agent in the EU (known as E535), and it is allowed to put up to 20 mg sodium ferrocyanide into 1 kg of salt. It is toxic for kidneys, but not in the low dosage used here. A man weighing 75 kg would have to ingest 165 grams salt in one day to cross the toxicity treshold of 4.4mg/kg weight (NOAEL).

It looks like that magnified - AFAIK it's ground, so that may explain the shapes it shows here.

It doesn't. You can see some grinding damage on some of the crystals, especially in the second shot, but it's not severe. You can't really grind crystals into spheres without controlled grinding of each crystal on a faceting machine, and even then, they tend to accumulate damage on natural cleavage planes.

Interesting to know ...

You've got full-blown weird "grown" shapes.

I presume that the sodium ferrocyanide might be responsible for that then? Food safety is pretty tight here in the EU, and I'm pretty sure that nothing illegal is being done in standard supermarket fare (or if it was being done at least it wouldn't stay unknown for too long ...).

Anyway thanks for taking the time and doing that research. Most interesting and enlightening!

Phil

Rodger in Edmonton wrote:

You are on the right path according to my photographic Truppenfuhrung --

Be cautious of too many elements in the field that can obscure the main objective.

In Combined Arms Ops with different color and style of formations,this can lead to the appearance of a busy battlefield buthazy objectives. A decisive target point in the field of view can help the viewer establish the precise goal of the operation.

Overall combined spice operations appear to be proceeding very well across the entire front - carry on =- keep objectives clear in each battle.

Think Austerlitz

If I take an overhead picture - the Pratzen Heights will be the clear subject, if I move my camera a further down from the heights, and do not include the heights, I find masses of engaged troops but its very hard to see Napoleon's master plan - include the heights and the melee at the bottom , the right flank , the left flank etc all make sense in the picture..

Note from GHQ: Those pesky geology mineral formations are giving us trouble any help is appreciated.

Keep up the great work

Best Regards, Rodger
Save Lives - Be an Organ or Stem Cell Donor.
Quaecumque vera

Thanks so much! That made me smile.

I assume that some clearer structure of the battlefield is in order here ...

I picked the scenes carefully, but have to admit that some additional thinking about picture composition might be a good idea. Have to find out about how to manipulate those tiny condiment heaps to my liking. Some small instruments for that might be the solution.

And I did learn something about Pratzen Heights - just looked it up! Very educational indeed.

Phil

You're a very good speaker! 👍