Mark,
Another great shot, as usual.
Ever time I try my hand at capturing snowflake images I really appreciate how good you are !! Could you please go over your technique again.
Thanks for the kind words - I think you are doing pretty good for just getting started.
Nice shots - I thin you are getting some camera shake that is taking the edge off the sharpness. You might want to try using a flash as your main source of light. When I first did snow crystals I used a spotmatic and flash - with the slow synch speed on the Spotmatic (I think it was 1/30th) I made sure to work at night and douse the lights before shooting, so only the light from the flash was in the image. With faster synch speeds - you can leave the lights on. But with flash, you will get a sharper image. Either that or build a rock solid copy stand or something. Of course, use mirror pre-fire. I don't use a cable release (never got around to buying one for the *ist-D) but it would be good too.
The snow was coming down in large clumps, so it was quite difficult to find one crystal all alone to shoot. Plus the temperature was hovering around freezing, which caused the snowflakes to melt pretty quickly.
That is the common bane of trying to work with snowflakes. I typically won't even bother if it is warmer than 28F. If it is right at freezing the latent head in the garage, the head from your fingers on the glass, even the heat from the 'cool' fluorescent lights I use for focusing can put it over the edge. Not to mention if you lean in a little and breath on the glass...
Wilson Bentley commented of the difficulty of capturing snowcrystals at length in some of his books and articles. The snow can also change character completely in a matter of minutes, but it may only last a few minutes and then change to something else. There are a hand full of basic types that are based on the temperature and degree of supersaturation of the air when the crystal forms. But the crystals may move back and forth between different conditions as they circulate in clouds and air masses - so a lot of flakes are hybrids, containing elements of two or more of the basic shapes.
This time I shot in RAW and tweaked things in Photoshop CS. The blue colour was added by altering the 'Temperature' setting in PS's RW converter.
I always shoot in raw (most everything) but with the crystals the only adjustments I make are to boost the shadows and contrast a bit. I use a blue filter over the flash, with a bit of open, un-filtered flash. That gets the mix of white and blue light and creates the gradient in the background. You want the light to bounce through the snow crystal at an angle, so it reflects within the crystal itself.
I really don't like relying on Photoshop for much in any of my photos - snowcrystals or otherwise - but then I tend to be a pretty straight photographer.
HTH -
MCC
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Mark Cassino Photography
Kalamazoo, MI
www.markcassino.com
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