These photos were challenging at best, to take. Following the recent winter storm, we had a sunny day and the ice crystals would melt despite a temperature of 14 degrees. Then you had to factor in the fact that, while I was photographing these crystals, there was wind that would try to blow away my sample. Also, throughout the day, even when the wind stopped, the snow would come down too fast and in many numbers (at a very quick rate), so I have a very limited time span to capture these photos, let alone capture them at the greatest detail possible. The ice crystals have to be more or less perfectly flat to be all in focus at once, which was daunting to do, given that I had practically nothing with me to accomplish this. This started with my very first camera, a Canon A460, which had only about 4 or 5 megapixel resolution, albeit had super macro mode, allowing it to focus down to 1 centimeter from the lens, although back then I had no way to reliably stabilize the camera; the quality of the camera's lens was surprisingly good though. I had also tried to do so with a microscope lens that I bought for my cellphone, however, to this day I haven't found the lens ever again, although that lens, surprisingly enough, allowed me to magnify stuff more than the microscope used for these images! It's kind of sad that this is just about the best result I can get with my current setup, given that I use an advanced point and shoot as well as a microscope; I mean, it's not really a cheap setup. I have also tried using an SLR camera to get such photos, which came out about the same quality as these although the problem with that was the setup, which wasn't very practical at all. So that's how I take really close up photos. The ice crystals that formed during this first winter storm of the season were mostly fairly small and uninteresting shapes, although the next few days afterwards, there was a fairly balanced mix of ice crystals as temperatures ranged from about 14 degrees, but mostly in the low 20's. These temperatures shouldn't be conducive towards the formation of interesting large crystals, but my photos prove otherwise! The largest snowflakes that I witnessed during these last few days were so large that I couldn't photograph the entire crystals at once (about 4 millimeters!). I thought about making a "panorama", or mosaic out of multiple individual photos, but the wind wouldn't let me. My hands didn't want to get cold despite me being outside with no gloves on for hours with temperatures hovering at no more than about 25 degrees. The current forecast calls for warmer temperatures, with at least some chance of snow, so I'd say to expect even larger sky crystals and I hope for more photos! And maybe some time, I will change my setup. I just thought that this is an interesting thing to do, I like photography, and I like to study how the light reflects from the structures of the crystals when the light shines from differing angles! Another major problem with getting these photos is that a lot of light is lost between the sample and the camera, so you have to somehow hold the camera steadily for a relatively long time, even at noon, because of the exposure time (shutter speed), which for me was about 1/4th of a second or longer
. And if the sun is shining without any clouds blocking, then you should probably forget about it; the ice crystals will melt if that is the case, before you can even take a good photo. I have wondered, "what kind of ice crystals would form had the temperature been 10 degrees or colder?". Or for example, "what kinds of snowflakes would be created at low air pressures?"
These photos were challenging at best, to take. Following the recent winter storm, we had a sunny day and the ice crystals would melt despite a temperature of 14 degrees. Then you had to factor in the fact that, while I was photographing these crystals, there was wind that would try to blow away my sample. Also, throughout the day, even when the wind stopped, the snow would come down too fast and in many numbers (at a very quick rate), so I have a very limited time span to capture these photos, let alone capture them at the greatest detail possible. The ice crystals have to be more or less perfectly flat to be all in focus at once, which was daunting to do, given that I had practically nothing with me to accomplish this. This started with my very first camera, a Canon A460, which had only about 4 or 5 megapixel resolution, albeit had super macro mode, allowing it to focus down to 1 centimeter from the lens, although back then I had no way to reliably stabilize the camera; the quality of the camera's lens was surprisingly good though. I had also tried to do so with a microscope lens that I bought for my cellphone, however, to this day I haven't found the lens ever again, although that lens, surprisingly enough, allowed me to magnify stuff more than the microscope used for these images! It's kind of sad that this is just about the best result I can get with my current setup, given that I use an advanced point and shoot as well as a microscope; I mean, it's not really a cheap setup. I have also tried using an SLR camera to get such photos, which came out about the same quality as these although the problem with that was the setup, which wasn't very practical at all. So that's how I take really close up photos. The ice crystals that formed during this first winter storm of the season were mostly fairly small and uninteresting shapes, although the next few days afterwards, there was a fairly balanced mix of ice crystals as temperatures ranged from about 14 degrees, but mostly in the low 20's. These temperatures shouldn't be conducive towards the formation of interesting large crystals, but my photos prove otherwise! The largest snowflakes that I witnessed during these last few days were so large that I couldn't photograph the entire crystals at once (about 4 millimeters!). I thought about making a "panorama", or mosaic out of multiple individual photos, but the wind wouldn't let me. My hands didn't want to get cold despite me being outside with no gloves on for hours with temperatures hovering at no more than about 25 degrees. The current forecast calls for warmer temperatures, with at least some chance of snow, so I'd say to expect even larger sky crystals and I hope for more photos! And maybe some time, I will change my setup. I just thought that this is an interesting thing to do, I like photography, and I like to study how the light reflects from the structures of the crystals when the light shines from differing angles! Another major problem with getting these photos is that a lot of light is lost between the sample and the camera, so you have to somehow hold the camera steadily for a relatively long time, even at noon, because of the exposure time (shutter speed), which for me was about 1/4th of a second or longer
. And if the sun is shining without any clouds blocking, then you should probably forget about it; the ice crystals will melt if that is the case, before you can even take a good photo. I have wondered, "what kind of ice crystals would form had the temperature been 10 degrees or colder?". Or for example, "what kinds of snowflakes would be created at low air pressures?"
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