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Handheld. Not a total success as the 8 shots were short (or my camera moved) but this one turned out ok.
For those that might have missed the narrative in yesterday’s snowflake post, I figured this should be seen on its own: a 20:1 super close-up of just a single branch of a snowflake, shot handheld and focus stacked.
The resolution of details in this version of the snowflake is more than double when compared to my 12X setup, due in part to greater magnification and part because diffraction is playing less of a role here. Both of these help with the details, but it’s also the reason why most people don’t think shooting this kind of image handheld is even possible.
When you get closer to your subject, your depth of field becomes shallower. The difference would absolutely be noticeable here, pushing the number of focus “slices” up. Only a tiny sliver of the snowflake is viewable at a time, and the closer you get the smaller it becomes. This isn’t the only factor that affects depth of field, however. We also have to be concerned about aperture.
The way a microscope objective collects light doesn’t usually involve an aperture (also referred to as an iris or a diaphragm). One can be added just behind the lens in order to gain greater depth of field, but this causes diffraction to blur the resulting image slightly and you lose details. If you shoot without anything narrowing the path of light you’ll have the best details but an even thinner slice of focus to work with. While I built an aperture assembly into my microscope lens, I didn’t use it for this.
A snowflake usually takes around 40 or so shots to focus stack, but roughly the same number of shots to get just the tip of a branch in focus. I’ve missed a few pieces that you can see if you REALLY know where to look. All of the frames needed to be manually aligned which was incredibly time consuming and tedious, and more manual corrections that usual were needed in the focus stacking process.
I don’t think I’ll be handholding this lens for anything that doesn’t outright require it, but I now have 20X and 100X microscope objectives to play with. As soon as the spring flowers are here I know I’ll have an unending supply of interesting subjects from insects to pollen. For now, I’ll continue to embrace the snow!
If you’re fascinated with the details you can discover in a snowflake, you’ll absolutely enjoy reading my book Sky Crystals: www.skycrystals.ca/book/ - it provides an entire photographic tutorial alongside all of the beautiful and understandable science that makes snowflakes take the shapes they do!
PENTAX K-1 • FF Mode • 6400 ISO • Pentax HD DA* 11-18 mm F2.8 ED DC AW
Rollei Astroklar Clear-Night Filter
Alte Brücke • Frankfurt-am-Main • Deutschland
My wife Dee & I spent the day birding at a new location in Pennsylvania. This was our first visit to the area and we were looking for birds to photograph. After walking about 1/4 mile down a gravel trail we came upon this beautiful waterfall. I had my camera set up for birding not shooting long exposure waterfall shots. I had the wrong lens and no tripod for long exposures. So I had to use what I had and shoot handheld. Here I am shooting the falls handheld in the next shot. I could only shoot the very top part of this beautiful waterfall with the lens I had on my camera. You can bet that Dee and I will make a return trip real soon with the right equipment. I really want to see these falls in Autumn when all the fall colors are bursting.