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Post by mickey on Dec 20, 2010 19:26:22 GMT -5
George got me fired up over these opals a few months ago. I bought the rough at our club show for $5/gram. Here are two 7mm round brilliant Welo opal earrings as a Christmas present to my daughter (per her request).  |
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Post by Barrett on Dec 21, 2010 2:31:55 GMT -5
Crystal opal is awesome stuff..think about it..not only do you get the color play of the opal but when you facet it to you get the brillance and light play as well. Hard to beat that combo.
Nice looking stones. Do you have a faceup shot? I was selling quite a few welo cut and cabs and rough about 5 months ago. Had a heck of a time get the phots looking good and the video i shot looking halfway decent. I found that the white base opal like yours looks better sitting on something black and likewise when i was shooting the darker colored welos to put those on white.
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Post by mickey on Dec 21, 2010 10:47:02 GMT -5
William, Here's one that I cut for my son that is more straight on. This one is 8mm. I have been photographing them in direct sunlight and using an aperture priority on my camera. While they do look better on a dark background, I've noticed that the exposure seems to be critical in capturing the flash of the opal.  I tried doing a video similar to the one that George had posted but it's done in fluorescent lighting and the opals don't look as good. www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZaKZb-XoJGw |
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sophia
Senior Member
Posts: 82
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Post by sophia on Dec 21, 2010 14:23:48 GMT -5
I think your photos look really good - when I took photos of opal doublets for my etsy site, they came out mostly white.
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Post by gsellis on Dec 22, 2010 7:04:24 GMT -5
Nice Mickey. You remind me that I need to process my videos of some later cuts...
What are you polishing with? I am using a Greenway, naked. I found that if I add any polish while working, it scratches. Since the Greenway is a Darkside with CrO embedded, it works very well.
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Post by mickey on Dec 22, 2010 13:44:34 GMT -5
George,
I've just been using a CrO ultralap to do the polishing. I've been using them on all my quartz stones and with these opals I can polish several stones on each one. These opals seem to be very soft. The good part is that they cut easily, but the bad part is that they scratch easily also. I found that as I got closer to the stop or closer to a polish that I would ease off on the pressure and that seemed to help avoid scratches.
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Post by gsellis on Dec 23, 2010 13:50:54 GMT -5
Yep. And when you scratch it, it is not just that facet, but the one on the tier before it too.  |
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Post by littler939 on Aug 9, 2012 5:20:13 GMT -5
Mickey, when you find a good technique to photo opals let me know.. i Just found alot of black fire opal from virgin valley and i am having a very hard time photographing them...
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