My try at snowflakes

[eccs19]

Someone had posted some snow flakes they did, and did a spectacular job. I decided to give it a try. Not even close to what the other person did. I ended up getting to cold, and gave up. Here is the best of the bunch that I tried. Slightly cropped. Definitely not easy to do.

 

[Jarmo]

Did you use a tripod? It's practically impossible to get a sharp shot without one.

 

[mark2]

Very cool, what was your setup and process?

 

[eccs19]

I did use a tripod. I shot at about F8, but I think that just made my DOF to shallow. If I didn't get so cold, I would have pulled out a flash and tried that. The one posted was a long exposure, so and slight movement would mess with it. I used my K7, 105mm Sigma 1:1 macro, and a bunch of tubes. Snow was just on a piece of black foam. I used a remote trigger, and used live view so the mirror slap wouldn't be an issue. Something to try again when it's not so cold out. Next time I'll use flash so I don't need such a long shutter speed.

 

[Jarmo]

Try pointing the camera straight down at the snow flake so that the bokeh won't be a problem. And focus manually using live view and x10 crop. (Obvious?)

I've been wanting to try these kind of photos for some time but haven't come across right type of flakes.

 

[eccs19]

Try pointing the camera straight down at the snow flake so that the bokeh won't be a problem. And focus manually using live view and x10 crop. (Obvious?)

I've been wanting to try these kind of photos for some time but haven't come across right type of flakes.

Great tips. I was wanting to shoot straight down, but with the temporary setup I had, I couldn't do that. I actually did focus manually, but didn't think to zoom in on the live view. I was using focusing rails to help. Next time I will try off camera flash also. As it was, this was a 4 second exposure, so any slight movement of course would be caught.

 

[jcrob33]

I tried this, Just went outside with my Sigma 70-300mm lens and couldn't focus in on the flakes.


Am I doing something wrong?

 

[rickowens]

interesting

 

[eccs19]

I tried this, Just went outside with my Sigma 70-300mm lens and couldn't focus in on the flakes.


Am I doing something wrong?

My guess is that the flakes are just to small to try this with a standard zoom lens, so you probably just couldn't see them. I'm sure you could do it with a zoom lens, but your probably going to need extension tubes to get that close to see the flakes.

 

[jcrob33]

Hum, It has a macro setting on it. But that didn't seem to do much either.

 

[eccs19]

Hum, It has a macro setting on it. But that didn't seem to do much either.

Zoom lenses are typically not true macro's. More like close up lenses. Your is probably a 1:3 macro. True macros are 1:1, and some consider 1:2 also as macro.

I figure with the number of tubes I had on my setup, I was at least 2:1, perhaps a little more, but probably not much more. I think even at 1:1, you'd have a hard time keeping the details of the small flakes after cropping the shot.

 

[Ron Evers]

Good one Mark, much better than my attempt.

 

[Undo]

Even though it is a little blurry, I like it. I don't even have the guts to try to photorgaph such delacate things!

 

[reznap]

If you want these to come out sharp with long exposures you'll have to use the self-timer - I find the 10 second one to work much better than the 2 second one when at super-telephoto lengths or when really close with macro.

You mentioned using off camera flash next time.. good idea. You'll be able to stop down more too and you won't have to worry about motion blur.. you can handhold the camera and lens if you want. The few recent shots I submitted here (check flickr, first 3 photos on it) were done with OCF and handheld.