Thursday, February 23, 2012

Photographing Individual Snowflakes


I have finally managed to photograph individual snowflakes with DSLR camera. Years ago I have made nice images with my old Minolta attached to microscope but microscope just doesn’t work all that well with my Canon EOS, I don’t know why. For these shots I was using Minolta 50mm 1:1 macro lens with MD/EOS adapter ring and 2X macro extender, focusing rail, off-camera Speedlite in manual mode and heavy-duty Manfrotto tripod. Aperture, shutter speed and focusing were all manual. For capturing the snowflakes I used black steel chalkboard that was cooled down for few minutes in a freezer and then placed in open area on the deck. When I had few snowflakes on chalkboard I placed it under the lens that was already pre-focused. This way I had to do only minimal re-focusing when I moved the board around. As you can see on picture of my setup, it was 0°C (32°F) when I took my shots and shortly after the snow turned to rain. We have very un-usual winter here in Southern Ontario, not too many opportunities to play around with this technique.

Very wet snow.

All snowflake pictures were shot @ ISO 100, f/11@1/200, Speedlite flash with difuser@1/2 power. Macro lens extender pushed the aperture to f/22


2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I sure wonder where the snow is... even here in Montreal I had to shovel less than I have fingers on my hand.

Karli @ The Bonnie 5 said...

These are INCREDIBLE!!! I can't believe you were able to get those amazing shapes! I tried last year (gigantic fail), and would you believe...it has snowed here ONCE this year. So crazy. (AND I forgot to try to capture a snowflake!) I'm not going to say i hope for more snow (because that would be crazy), but if we get some, I'm definitely going to try again.

Yours are perfect! SO cool!!

Hope you're doing well friend! Life is crazy as usual. We've had company staying with us for awhile, and we're getting ready to leave for a couple weeks for Spring Break. We're taking the kids to Disney World, etc... and then to south Florida to visit family. Have a wonderful week! :-)

(Wow, did I really use the word "crazy" 3 times in this comment? I swear I'm an actual adult).