Some snow flakes

crimbfighter · Feb 15, 2016

I finally had the winning combination of the right weather, the right level of ambition, and the right amount of time on my hands to try photographing some snow flakes. This was my first attempt. After about 20 minutes of playing with different setups, I finally found one that worked. It was fun, but cold... I froze my a** off and could barely feel my fingers after an hour in 10 deg weather. I diffused the flash with a multicolored piece of tissue paper to get some pleasing colors.

1. This one turned out the best and was the last one I shot. I finally realized I was not at max magnification so the rest suffered from loss of resolution due to heavy cropping.. I blame the cold. It made me dumb...

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SquarePeg · Feb 15, 2016

Pretty cool (ba-dum-dum). How do you photograph a snowflake? What equip did you use and were these "in flight" or on some type of clear surface?

crimbfighter · Feb 15, 2016

SquarePeg said:
Pretty cool (ba-dum-dum). How do you photograph a snowflake? What equip did you use and were these "in flight" or on some type of clear surface?

Thanks. They were most definitely not in flight. That would be an amazing trick! I suspended a plate of glass directly above a remote flash. Camera was on a tripod and I was shooting with my 105mm macro with 78mm of extention tubes. Max magnification was 1.74:1. You have to make sure to let the glass acclimate to the ambient temp before starting otherwise it just melts all the flakes. It's also quite tricky to find the flakes on the glass, but once I did, I marked them by placing a toothpick pointing to it to make it easier to find in the viewfinder.