Robert's Ramblings

This kind of gold has nothing to do with Olympic medals!

This entire little pile of 100 gold blocks would fit on the nail of my little finger and modern electronics is full of them. When I first started my career the equivalent parts would have been the size a 20cent piece for each one.

Their technical name is called a 'ceramic multilayer capacitor' and their job in modern electronics, like mobile phones and televisions, is to store electric charge. Think of them as tiny little batteries that you can charge and discharge.
Actually these parts are now quite large compared to version half or even a third their size.

Miniaturising electronic components is not only good for making more compact products. Smaller parts means less material means cheaper manufacturing using less raw materials and hence less impact on our environment. They are as good as gold!

To create this image I used a 200mm (100mm + 2x converter) macro setup with a very small aperture for a large depth of field (not that is seems like it), a low ISO setting and a long 20 second exposure. During the exposure I applied some strobe lighting from the left to create additional highlights and contrast.


Photo: Robert Rath, '366 Days of 2012, Day 216 - Good as Gold'. 20 sec f/32 ISO-200 macro + off camera fill strobe