Mineral Perspectives - Thumbnails (DVD)

I thought I would give a quick review of the latest DVD released by Blue Cap Productions, who have been producing an excellent series of DVD titles for mineral collectors and enthusiasts. In the near future I'll do a round-up of their many DVDs with clips from each, but for now a taste of their latest offering a chance to look at mineral specimens in the collections of three famous collectors, each of whom have a particular interest in thumbnail-sized specimens.

The DVD covers the collections of Carolyn Manchester, Wendell Wilson (editor of Mineralogical Record) and Rich Olsen. The show is hosted by Jim Houran, a regular poster here on mindat.org - and a task he takes on and delivers on admirably. Talking to the owners of the specimens he always seems to ask the questions that I was thinking of - I didn't once feel that he had missed out on something important.

Each specimen is shown on a rotating stage as the owner and Jim talk about it off-screen. I know that Blue Cap have had several years to perfect their specimen video skills, but I have to complement them on this - these are all small specimens, yet they fill the screen beautifully and I cannot fault the video quality. I did find that the colour saturation was more natural when watching the DVD on my computer than when watching it on an (upscaling) DVD player connected via HDMI to my widescreen TV, but that could as much be due to the configuration of my TV as anything else.

Almost 60 specimens are covered in this video, here is one example, a Scorodite from Wendell Wilson's collection:

mpers4.mp4

I very much enjoyed watching this DVD, and it's something once you've watched through with the audio once you could leave running on your TV with the sound off as "moving wallpaper" just admiring the specimen quality while you do other things. The only downside is you may end up rather jealous that you don't have any of these fabulous specimens in your own collection!

The DVD is produced by Blue Cap Productions and is available from them:

http://www.bluecapproductions.com