Smoke

This is a facetted piece of smoke quartz with rutil needles, backlit with a tiny bike light.

It's hard to see rutil needles properly without some kind of lighting from the back, but since the actual gem is only 8mm in diameter, no normal flash can do this properly without overlighting everything in the picture.

I guess I could have built a flashtube, but it was way easier to use what lay nearby.

The lens is a 150mm telemacro, with an 2x extender, which gives me a nice larger-than-life magnification. The picture is exposed for eight seconds at f32, with the bike light as the only lightsource.

This photo shows the set-up. The large white stone is one of those milk quartz rocks you always find around the house. On it lies the gem, the light and a ITIL-badge which serves as a gobo. The yellow tripod in the background holds a flash which does not do anything useful for the purpose of the above picture.

Also, this is the first post for Shuttercentral. We will try our best to make this a most picturesque place to be. Welcome, everyone.