Lights
Once you have good optics and a camera, you quickly run into the
next major issue, which is how to light a subject for macrophotography.
Flash
The big virtue here is that you can do things with flash to eliminate
vibration problems. One trick is to use a second curtain trigger,
shoot in a room with very low ambient, and allow a long enough exposure
time to allow vibrations to damp out. This is perhaps the best way to
avoid vibrations caused by a camera shutter opening.
Continuous Illumination
The usual complaint about flash is that you don't have modelling light,
which can be very important when photographing minerals with significant
surfaces causing specular relections. The best answer to this is really
using a diffuser.
An LED light source that is cheap and highly recommended is the
Jansjo lamp from IKEA. I'll say more once I get my hands on one.
One concern with LED lights is their weird spectral output
(typically a bimodal spectrum with little green output).
Feedback? Questions?
Drop me a line!
Tom's Mineralogy Info / tom@mmto.org