Wow thanks everyone! What a wonderful thing to see first thing in the morning. I have taken photos at the Smithsonian before and gotten glare (even somehow gotten photos of myself instead of the case contents). I tried using my hand and/or paper as a diffuser and still was not happy. So I took these without flash, as an experiment, to see what would happen.



I set the camera to Av mode. This pinned the aperture to my selected setting, f4, since that would let it in the most light. Then I turned the ISO to the lowest number that allowed enough time so the shutter would stay open for more than 1/60 of a second. For most cases that was 800, but for some it was 1600, like the cat's eyes that will be posted later on. Then I braced as best I could for each shot. When the first 2 were minerals ok, I shot the rest. I also found that placing the camera lens against the plastic - yes lens touching the plastic GENTLY - eliminated almost all reflections of me, other guests and kids doing things I won't mention.



In Photoshop, I use white balance and unsharp mask automatically on all pictures. I found that in all cases where the color still looked wrong, after white balancing, Auto Color Correction seemed to fix it. There were a small number of pictures that had glare from the plastic, probably because of a picture being taken behind me. After some experimentation I found that gamma correction reduced or eliminated the glare when it was not too bad. Several of these pictures, however, were not fixable by me without doing artwork, so they are not posted. Unfortunately, one was a Les Farges pyromorphite that was incredible. There were a few shots that were embarrassingly crooked, Photoshop has a fix for that. I try very hard to use ONLY tools that keep the picture honest and avoid those that create artworks. The tools I listed are really the only ones I know other than cropping :-)



I hope that doesn't disappoint you or ruin the photos for you. But I have found Photoshop to be helpful when used in small doses. I have tried very hard to make accurate pictures of the minerals using these tools and these tools only. And I threw out about 2-3% of the pictures as not salvageable. I honestly think the biggest help was in getting the best picture within my skill initially (no flash, Av mode, camera against the plastic), since only a small number of shots were rescued by gamma correction..



Bob