DPReview TV's Don Komarechka is famous for his snowflake macro photography. This week, he gives us a quick lesson on how it's done. Give it a watch, then try it yourself!
For the GX9: maybe I missed this, but since the Laowa 25mm 2.5-5X Ultra-Macro Lens is not made in the Micro Four Thirds mount, do you use one of the other camera mount Laowas, then adapt to MFT?
Right on - I have an EF mount version of the lens and use an adapter to mount it to the MFT body. Since this lens is purely manual, no fancy adapter required.
Dear Don!! Thank you so much for the great job!! I was about 14 at the beginning of 1963 (the 25th of last month I turned 73...), and my parents & two older sisters, just moved from Italy to Switzerland... I wish I had a camera, that time, but I only had a microscope, it was winter and I left it, for the night, outside in the cold, and the following morning I could watch the beautiful snow-crystals!! Later on I've got a camera from my parents: a 2nd hand Zeiss Ikonta 4.5X6, then moved later to a Porst (35 mm film) to end with a Konica T4 & accessories; as an enlarger I had a Durst 69 & the other needed stuff..., but when photography turned digital I've sold all the analogue stuff, and started writing about politic & religious stuff because the capital-imperialistic system must be changed for everybody's good!! Thanks again, and all the best!! COMRADE-Saint Renato Taboo-breaker, & whistleblower.
The temperatures vary, but then must be at least 3 degrees below freezing. Remember that the snowflakes are forming higher in the atmosphere where it is usually colder, and the largest snowflakes form at around -15C in the clouds, which translates to roughly -8 to -10C on the ground given an average cloud ceiling.
However, and this is critical: often the most beautiful snowflakes are not the biggest. I find that more exotic crystals are much more interesting and they occur just below freezing, or at extremely cold temperatures. They can often be less than a millimeter in diameter and more difficult to photograph, but offer up quite a bit of mysterious beauty.
That's also not taking into account barometric pressure, wind speeds, whether or not the snow is created by lake-effect phenomena, etc. - lots of environmental factors go into finding perfect snowflakes!
Hello Don, thank you for this very informatice video. Have you ever tried focus bracketing yourself, with a 1:1 macro lens plus teleconverter plus extension tube plus Raynix, like done here: https://www.dpreview.com/forums/post/64609853 ?
I have not done so extensively, since I prefer to use an automated focusing rail if I am not handholding the camera. This is more precise for very small subjects, and you don't get the same sort of "breathing" that you would get from focus bracketing.
When you change the focus point of a lens, you also slightly change the focal length. This in turn causes a slightly shift in field of view which needs to be corrected for in post, essentially "nesting" the images inside of one another slightly like those Russian Matryoshka stacking dolls. Not a huge deal, but there is a loss of resolution as a result and some images with immediate sharp shifts in focus can be more of a challenge to stack this way.
I should say that it DOES work! Just not my preferred process. :)
Don, thanks for finally giving credit to Vermont's "Snowflake Bentley" in the comments. https://snowflakebentley.com/ Photostacking is not for everyone and very memory-intensive. Doing it with 1 shot on film in freezing cold and "post-processing" in the darkroom is the high art. Nevertheless, nice you call attention to nature's design through your work. Jan
Don said during the video that have used Panasonic GX9 and even placed the same on text later on over the video, but that is not completely correct, as the camera I have seen on video more time was Panasonic G9, do not know why he ignored this... People who know the cameras can easily confirm this, G9 is a very different and much more powerfull camera than the GX9, I know that is just a letter...but really very different cameras, even if from same system and same manufacturer. I believe that is important to refer that as you are misleading your viewers. Nevertheless, great work on your website, for sure I will follow it
I do not own a Lumix G9, and indeed the camera being used is a GX9. I was also using a Lumix S1R on the full frame side of things.
The G9 has an EVF bump in the middle and a much larger grip. When I'm holding the camera at around the 3:15 mark, you can see the diminutive size of the grip and at around 3:20 that there is no EVF bump (the GX9 has a rangefinder-style EVF on the side of the camera, not the middle).
Thanks for the concern, but there was nothing misleading about the equipment used. :)
Ah! Forgot that one with top display, you are right, sorry, from a distance they are quite similar in many angles...nevertheless I still think you should have mentioned that camera as well and not only mention the GX9 as S1R is the one we see more time during this video, just my opinion.
Hello Don, thank you for the video. Another newbie question please, how do you set your focus bracketing, I mean is it the same setting for all snowflakes you take?
"Focus bracketing" is a technique that would be impossible to use for this subject or with any high magnification macro lens, since all of these lenses are manual focus only. The term referred to the camera's ability to adjust focus in steps across the subject, taking a photo each time in an automated way - but only with compatible lenses.
Because autofocus macro lenses achieve a maximum of 1:1 magnification and I am generally using much more than that for snowflake photography, it's not a feature I can use. Instead, I physically move the camera forward and backward by adjusting my left hand that is holding the edge of the ring flash and resting on the table. The subtlest movements allow me to shift my focus across the crystals.
I am guessing that this is a dumb question (but, hey, let's support the "No question is a stupid question." view.), but . . .
Why not stop down the lens, to get a much greater depth of field (ie, far fewer images needed to stack, to get the entire snowflake in perfect focus)? With the great low-light performance of so many newer digital cameras, and a decent ring flash, surely this could be done without a meaningful sacrifice in terms of image quality?
This guy's a pro, so I am sure there is a good reason for his process. But I'm not sure I see it. (Or, to be more accurate, I'm quite sure I am overlooking it. LOL)
Not a stupid question at all. At macro photo, F2 or F11 or even F32, your depth of field is still razor thin. That is why you need to do photo stacking.
Vin, Thanks for the info. I'm a very experienced photographer in the B/W darkroom. But (as you could have guessed) with zero experience in macro photography.
vincent_r is right about the razor thin depth of field being maintained for macro work, but the bigger problem comes from diffraction.
When you shoot at 1:1 magnification, you lose two stops from what your lens is labelled as (ie. F/2.8 measured at infinity is roughly F/5.6 at macro levels). This is your "effective aperture". For every magnification factor that you add beyond 1:1, add an extra stop. So, if I was shooting at 5:1 magnification with a lens set to F/11, adding six stops would get me in the neighbourhood of F/96 as an effective aperture. Diffraction would destroy much of my image quality in the process.
And yes, the true formula for calculating effective apertures is also dependent on the "pupil ratio", the difference in size between the entrance and exit pupils of the lens, but these numbers are never published... so we assume they are equal for the purposes of this simpler equation.
Don, Thanks to you as well! Very interesting. Man, macro work is, technically, much more difficult than my types of photography! :-)
(Since I live in always-sunny Southern California; I will unfortunately not get a chance to do this fascinating branch of photography. But I'm certainly enjoying it as a viewer.)
I've used Picolay for much of my stacking. It can make for better results than Photoshop. In fact, one of the options is to use five different stacking operations at a time! Don was correct about not needing a decent setup. Having a decent setup can make the stacking process easier, but also less images are required. Instead of needing to adjust the camera angle, try to have the snowflake parallel to the lens at night using a light source, adjusting the source to get the correct angle! My new Flickr https://www.flickr.com/photos/160246804@N08/
Good lecture and details. I was always wondering the best way to do this. Of course, with digital photography, focusing becomes "easier". How did they do this in the old days with film?
Wilson Bentley photographed snowflakes over a century ago, using large format film with the snowflake on a glass plat positioned parallel to the focal plane of the camera, and illuminated from behind. This transmitted light photography would yield a white snowflake on a white background, and Bentley wanted the contrast that I can achieve with modern cameras. To accomplish this, he painstakingly cut out the snowflake from the negative to achieve this effect. So, not really the same thing as me using reflected light on an angle, but photographing snowflakes was more than possible in the era of film. :)
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