Opal Sheriff Program
Opal Sheriff Program is to monitor our Opal sellers so that all listings are accurate in their description and images so buyers have confidence when they bid.
Our Verified sellers program has been successful as our Sellers have high standards and this has resulted in our site having extremely strong and supportive repeat buyers
BLACK OPALS
Body Tone, Description of patterns and Brightness Rating
Body tone
Brightness Rating
Patterns
Black Opal is highly regarded as one of the best Opals to own due to its rarity and unique
No other gemstone is so memorizing and each so different depending on how the opal was formed so extremely rare to find matching black opals
Black opals are also extremely difficult to take pictures of as many opals have sophisticated light reflectors of silica spheres of micro 150-300 nm packed as cubic or lattice shape
It is helpful for the buyer to have some understanding of the structure of black opals.
As these silica spheres produce internal colors by interfering and diffraction with the light passing through the opal.
It is the regularity of these spheres that causes wave length of colors so can view and enjoy Mother Nature’s creation of colors.
Some opals have many layers or color bars and this does affect pictures
Sellers on Opal auctions are Verified Sellers who have to agree to our high standards, and we do not allow enhanced opal pictures as you see on many web and auction sites.
Our images are as close to possible to the natural color in sunlight
But cameras sometimes do not capture the true color so we suggest to buyer to ask for picture of opal in the palm of the hand or held between finger tips.
So if the skin is yellowish or grayish the camera is not correctly set.
As an extreme example we used Nikon 925 to take these pictures
All these opals are blue but underlying structure has purple mauve sphere structures so when we take picture the camera captures the stronger underlying purple colors
But when we use our canon the opal shows true blue color
This is extreme example but displays principles of how cameras capture the diffracted light.
Modern camera today to have slight difference in their settings and also depending on lighting systems used or if opals taken in direct sunlight or cloudy day.
Last Update: 9 Apr 2010