A couple of Christmas snowflakes

Like so many other people we got hammered by the recent storm. Happily our area didn't get too much snow, just a lot of blowing and drifting, but I'm sure that was cold comfort to all the folks affected by the numerous collisions and road closures.

It did however give me a chance to get started again on shooting snowflakes (in between shoveling them).

Here's a couple from this Christmas morning:

For this year I came up with a method of attaching a microscope turret to my bellows with 4X, 10X, 20X & 40X microscope objectives attached. That way I can quickly alter my magnification without disturbing my specimen.

It seems to be working at present, although at 40X the DOF is very small even for snowflakes.

Anyway, hope you like them and be sure to give this post a thumbs up

Fred.

t_3 wrote:

very nice results! (and looking at your "apparatus" I don't have to wonder if I could achive something like that ...)

I'm sure you could. Snowflakes are actually not that difficult to photograph. With a bellows (or extension tubes) and a reversed 50mm lens you can get to about 3X. Then its just a question of lighting the snowflake. I illuminate them for below, but from the top works well also. All you really is some -10C weather and snow.

Here's what my first copy stand looked like back in 2008.

I got some really nice images with that.

I look forward to seeing your images.

Fred

RBIV wrote:

OK. I'll probably embarrass myself with this question, but as a coastal California boy who seldom sees it snow, I have to ask...

...how do you gather, mount, illuminate, focus, etc. without the snowflake melting?

After this weekend's deadly winter blast across the continent I envy you your climate

Here's an earlier version of my setup showing the basic idea.

Start with a cold temperature and some snow coming down. I find -10C is good. The snowflakes don't immediately sublimate and I can stay outside for a while without the risk of frostbite No wind helps as well as the crystals are less likely to be damaged from collisions with each other.

I collect the falling snow on a piece of glass from an old picture frame, and mount it on my upside down microscope base. I put the camera in liveview mode and adjust focus using the focus knobs on the microscope base. I have the HDMI output from the camera going to a monitor so I can see details better.

Once I'm in focus I fire a flash up through the crystal and take the image. I use the lid off a Maxwell House coffee can to get the blue colour.

Then I postprocess the image to remove any water drops and other junk from the image.

As I've said many times I much prefer photographing them to shoveling them.

If you'd like to see lots more examples please check out my snowflake album on Flickr, or a short video I uploaded The Beauty of Snowflakes - YouTube

Fred.

ozdean wrote:

Stunning Fred and what a great set up - very clever!

You are the snow flake King.

Tell us when you find 2 the same.

Merry Christmas.

Thanks Dean, but there's only one snowflake king and his name is Kenneth G. Libbrecht of Caltech. He's written the book (literally!) on snow crystals. He grows snow crystals in his lab under ideal conditions and can even produce identical twin snowflakes. His crystals have even appeared on US Postage Stamps.

If you want to know more about the fascinating world of snow crystals search for him on YouTube.

If you want to see some amazing snowflake images check out Don Komarechka  & Alexey Kljatov on Flickr.

Fred.

I tried this winter also and my results were bad. You got some amazing ones!