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Snowflake macro photography (2013)
- anoplus 9y agoIf nature had a logo, it must have hexagon.
- bahjoite 9y agoOr "Enigma". https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7616/16857912678_239dc8dee5_o.jpg https://farm8.staticflickr.com/7616/16857912678_239dc8dee5_o...
- failrate 9y agoI just see a bunch of images of Alex Jones.
- d33 9y agoCould you elaborate the joke? I don't know him/her.
- AlexNotJones 9y agoAlex Jones is far from being a Snowflake, usually it's Liberals and left-wing advocates who get this "badge of honor"
- knolan 9y agoThat is a horrific site to navigate on mobile.
- ballenf 9y agoYeah, very flaky.
- whatiseeyoudid 9y agoI see what you did there.
- sid- 9y agovery snowflaky :)
- bluetwo 9y agoI see what you did there...
- Mitchhhs 9y agoQuestion: What makes snowflakes symmetrical?
- blutfink 9y agoI was wondering the same thing. Part of it may be selection bias, though.
- allenz 9y agoSnowflakes start from a crystal with hexagonal symmetry and grow via processes that preserve that symmetry. See the top two answers here: https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/3795/why-are-snowflakes-symmetrical https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/3795/why-are-sno...
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- andai 9y agoSexual selection favors the symmetrical ones?
- blutfink 9y ago;) Selection by the photographer might create the impression of a more prevalent, more perfect symmetry than appears in nature.
- KGIII 9y agoI posted this above, but you may not expand the full thread and see it. So, I'll post it again. http://nautil.us/issue/35/boundaries/why-nature-prefers-hexagons http://nautil.us/issue/35/boundaries/why-nature-prefers-hexa... Sorry for repeating my post, but I figure you may enjoy the linked article. Additionally, two documentaries spring to mind. Forces of Nature and The Code: Numbers Shape and Prediction.
- mi100hael 9y agoAlso: What makes such snowflakes largely 2D?
- stephen82 9y agoFeel free to see all of his photos at https://www.flickr.com/photos/alexey_kljatov https://www.flickr.com/photos/alexey_kljatov I'm more than mesmerized by his work; just stunning, I'm in complete awe!
- KGIII 9y agoI forget the name, but there's a great documentary about the man and methods who got it all started. Wilson 'Snowflake' Bentley was the man and, as I recall, he got some help from his wife and went to great lengths to take his pictures. This was back in the 1860s and very difficult. The Smithsonian has some of his works on display. It is great how accessible this has become. I find them fascinating but I'm very biased. I have quite an extreme love of snow.
- dmix 9y agoI found this short about him, did the job for me, fascinating person - thanks for the heads up. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ptLmA263hlk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ptLmA263hlk
- iluvmylife 9y agoI agree! Going by the Bruce Lee quote "I fear not the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks once, but I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,000 times". Only in this case kick = photography. There is definitely value in practicing a singular art with focus.
- Nition 9y agoIt's nice when people get simple tools to do great work. The PowerShot A650 is a decade old point-and-shoot. He's installed a custom OS to get RAW support, and averaged several photos together to reduce noise, and what a great result. An EOS 5D wouldn't do much better.
- steveridout 9y agoIs it possible that a high quality camera with a small sensor could actually be preferable to a full frame camera like a 5D in this particular case? My thinking is that it might be hard to get more than a sliver of the image in focus with a full frame camera. Does anyone with more experience know if this is true?
- pilsetnieks 9y agoThe sensor size doesn't change anything. A camera with a larger sensor would have the same image projected on the sensor but it would also capture more around it - basically, you could get the same image by cropping that part out of the larger image. However, a larger sensor probably would have larger pixels, which would help with lighting and noise reduction.
- zootboy 9y agoFocus bracketing could easily solve that problem. In fact, Magic Lantern (the equivalent of CHDK for the larger Canon DSLRs) has a mode to do automated focus bracketing with the electronic focus controls.
- Nition 9y agoHe does mention that, yeah: > The smaller the focal length of the external lens and bigger - of built-in camera's optics, the greater magnification is achieved, but less depth of field is obtained. Compact camera, with a sensor of small physical size, have an advantage over DSLRs in the depth of field and mobility, allowing you to take pictures quickly and easily change the location and shooting angle. But small sensor have much higher noise level.
- Phrodo_00 9y ago
- jbeales 9y agoNeeds a (2013)
- joshvm 9y agoI wonder if you could improve the pollen image using super-resolution techniques Shouldn't be too difficult, just requires a several images (stacks in this case) from slightly shifted viewpoints.
- divbit 9y agoThese are just the most beautiful pictures.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- nayuki 9y agoKenneth G. Libbrecht snowflake photo collection is another good one: http://www.its.caltech.edu/~atomic/snowcrystals/photos3/photos3-old.htm http://www.its.caltech.edu/~atomic/snowcrystals/photos3/phot... ; http://snowcrystals.com/ http://snowcrystals.com/
- metaphorical 9y agoBeautiful. Reminds me of Wilson Bentley's old photos: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilson_Bentley https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilson_Bentley
- javiramos 9y agoWow! These images are perfect for a coffee table book. The thin film interference colors are amazing!
- KGIII 9y agoHe does sell prints but, as far as I know, doesn't have a whole book out. I suppose you could email him and ask him to consider it? In the meantime, you may be interested in this: https://www.amazon.com/Art-Snowflake-Photographic-Album/dp/076034700X https://www.amazon.com/Art-Snowflake-Photographic-Album/dp/0...
- noisy_boy 9y agoI most impressed by the "less is more" category of photos he took. The clean lines, simplicity of shapes while maintaining enough contrast to be beautiful is just astounding. Had no idea that these kind of shapes happened with snowflakes.
- amigoingtodie 9y agoI have achieved similar results photographing snowflakes w/ an iPhone 4S and a macro lense I bought for $5 at the Walmart checkout isle.
- kbart 9y agoShow us then.
- amigoingtodie 9y agoHere's one from a few years ago: https://m.imgur.com/a/0PZFM https://m.imgur.com/a/0PZFM
- _callcc 9y agoSuch a relief to see the word in a headline with its actual meaning. Plus, the pictures are sublime.
- Scarys 9y agoIt's nice when people get simple tools to do great work.
- bojanvidanovic 9y agoWow, beautiful nature.
- rukuu001 9y agoIncredible pictures, and fantastic to see the method documented so well. I'd read about doing the reverse-lens thing but never seen a setup and couldn't imagine how it'd work. Also, the description of his post-processing is revealing. Great to see how much work goes into pictures like that.
- thinkMOAR 9y agoaffirmative, i see it pass by about every year since 2013, i still look at them with as much amazement as i did in 2013. A reverser ring for a e.g. 50mm to do macro is quite common in photography. Extender rings work quite nice too, though depth of field becomes mega-shallow, so for any significant object, you will need to resort to image stacking to get a properly focused subject.
- blubb-fish 9y agoIt is incredible how complex water is. Chemically it is a super-simple molecule. For me this is a reminder that in nature even the most simple-seeming "things" will turn out to be unbelievably complex if researched or observed more closely. Like when physicists believed that they solved physics in the late 19th century - b/c it was just about solving some math problems revolving around Newton mechanics. Nature is consistently always being surprising - always.
- bridge_ro 9y agoNo lie, this was a fantastic way to start my day.