Imagine Daily Geological Reports, End of Well Reports, Core Reports and Formation Evaluation Reports augmented with high resolution Micro-Photographs. I have been carrying and using my own microscope since the start of my wellsite career in 1978. I began experimenting with Micro-Photography a few years after I started and over the years, I have perfected the technique.  

 

Up until a few years ago, it was necessary to scan the sample tray for tabular or “flat on one side” chips to photograph through the microscope because of the extremely narrow field of focus; one section of an irregular chip would be in focus but the remainder would be unfocused. A large number of chips had to be photographed and those pictures that were in focus over the most important features, were used in the reports.  A lot of time was spent on pictures that would later be rejected or required cropping out of the fuzzy areas.  

 

New computer software has changed that. Instead of wasting time on numerous chips, hoping for a good result, I can now select the best or most representative chip of what I wish to illustrate: porosity, fracture surfaces, pore throat geometry (including pore throat width in microns), mineralization on fracture surfaces or minerals or bitumen lining or plugging the pore throats. That chip is photographed at varying focal depths and a 'stacking' program blends the images, rendering a 3-D image.