Chuck,
When you’re shopping for a new ‘scope or looking to upgrade the one you have I suggest you try to include glass that will let you take low magnification pictures too. When I’m looking at slices or thin sections I move them around to get an impression of the overall piece. You can’t share that impression with folks with a single picture at medium magnification so a larger field of view is a real help. The “regular” magnification I shoot at gets me a field about 3mm wide. That works OK for fine grained achondrites or chondrites with small features like CO3s. But with an L chondrite or a CV3 you can easily have a single chondrule hogging the field. The trouble is that low magnification lenses cost a lot.
I had a workaround that I thought of as my own little secret ‘til I was found out by Larry Chitwood. Larry, a geologist and clever guy, co-authored “Field Guide to Meteors and Meteorites” with Richard Norton. I had emailed him a few pictures and he called asking about one in particular. He had opened the picture with photo editing software and for some reason had radically jazzed up some settings. I don’t know what they were – contrast, color saturation or maybe others. He spied signs of a three by three pattern and asked what’s up with that? “Did you put a bunch of pictures together to make this one?” Bingo. I’d been found out. A poor man’s low power lens is paste. Electronic paste of course.
And with it you can make pictures of chondrules as they sit assembled instead of as individuals or an overview of a Martian slide. Examples? Of course.
John
