Mark Cassino Photography - Mark's Blog

We had a moderately strong winter storm in west Michigan yesterday, leaving just under 14 inches (35.5 cm) of snow - now being dubbed the Groundhog Day Snowstorm.  Unfortunately, the quality of the snow crystals was lacking and despite shooting for about 9 hours (on and off) I only managed to get a handful of acceptable images. This is the best crystal I saw all day... The plate of glass that I catch the crystals on filled up with dusty bits of broken snowflakes when suddenly in the thick of it all this very nicely formed stellar dendrite lands...  Not only is it well formed, but it also did not land on top of a lot of debris and detritus, which happens all too often in heavy snows.

The image above is my best take of this crystal - taken with a single red led "lens" (the cover that snaps over a holiday light) on the flash. I positioned the flash so that the red lens was at the edge of the frame, resulting in a crystal that is generally lit by the white light of the flash with red light entering at an angle to create colored highlights.

Before using the red light I tried a few experiments with the yellow lens. Here's the best of those: 

In this case the yellow lens is directly below the crystal, so it is getting the full effect of yellow light. In my last experiment I noted the blue color in the crystal, and that is repeated here.  I had wondered if it might be the result of the multi-white balance setting, but in experimenting yesterday I found n that multi white balance had no effect on the blue crystal phenomena - so it much just be how the crystal bends the light! I experimented with the yellow filter on a few more crystals, but ultimately abandoned it in favor of the red filter.

More images from yesterday's storm will be coming...

 

A respectable snowstorm has been working its way through the Great Lakes region today, and I've most of the day outside alternately photographing snowflakes and shoveling them off the sidewalk.  Taking a break right now and planning to head back out once feeling returns to my fingers and toes...

Here's the first shot of the day - a very small plate that maybe started to grow towards being a sectored plate, and either stopped or had the plates worn off. This was shot with a single red lens on the flash - I'm not sure what the striations are in the crystal itself. Maybe they are stress fractures - the wind has been howling like a banshee all day and bashing the snow crystals to pieces.

Click on the image for a larger view. 

 Made with a Pentax K-3, DFA 50mm macro reverse mounted on lots of extension.

An older photo (spring, 2008) that I never got around to processing. Shot near Michigan's Jordan River - Nick Adams country. Pentax K10D and DFA 16-45 f4 lens.

Here's an image that still speaks to me - the full moon setting over the South Haven, Michigan, lighthouse: 

I made this image  back in 2002 and of course on film. Got up early to get to the beach on time, and set up the camera and tripod on an ice dune along the shore, south of the lighthouse. It was -12F (-24C) - i.e. damn cold! - and a steady breeze blew off the lake. I loaded Kodak E100S (if I recall correctly) into my trusty Pentax Pz-1p and shot 3 rolls of film before the cold overwhelmed me. Back at my car I dropped my keys, and actually had a hard time picking them up and  getting my fingers to  work them into the door.

Another photographer showed up shortly after I arrived.  Like me, he had watched the moon rise/set times on an online almanac and picked a time close to dawn when the conditions would be right for this kind of shot. (You need to shoot the moon in twilight if you want to balance the lighting between the moon, and the earth here below.)  He had driven up from Indiana, considerably farther than my short trip. I don't remember his name, but we grabbed some hot coffee and breakfast at a nearby fast food joint.

The ultimate irony: the extreme temperatures were just too much for the Sigma EX 70-200 f2.8 lens I was using. When the lens chilled down the aperture opened up and would not close. In fairness to Sigma the temperatures were far below the stated operating range for the lens. So, when I picked up my film from the lab I was horrified to see that all of the frames were just blank - all but the first 3. So, here is one of three...

Lighthouses are not a subject matter that I seek out much these days, but I enjoyed photographing them in the past. I came back to this image as part of a project to rebuild my archive galleries on this website -which you can find here:

www.markcassino.com/b2evolution/index.php/photo/lighthouses

I recently put together a new collection of 100 snowflake photos. The gallery ranges from some of the first photos I made (on film) in 1999 through photos made in early 2015. If you are interested in seeing more snowflake photos, follow this link:100 Snowflake Photos (or click the snowflake photo below). Enjoy!

We had a few hours of very light snow yesterday. Unfortunately most of the snowflakes that fell were rime encrusted and  poorly formed - like this one.  I tried to use the opportunity to experiment with lighting the snow crystal with a yellow light source. For reasons unknown to me, this crystal took on a blue hue, while the golden light filled the background. Maybe it is an artifact of the camera's white balance adjustment, especially since the multi white balance feature was enabled and may have tried to compensate for what the camera thought was different light sources.

Well - better blue snow than yellow snow, I guess!

I light these crystals with a flash mounted below the subject. In a few cases - when the snowflake is opaque and the light cannot pass through it - a slave flash is added above. The flash is the sole source of light when the image is taken, to minimize any effects of camera shake. Given that I use a simple tabletop tripod, and the that the lens is typically mounted on lots of extension, vibrations are always a problem. Instead of trying to fasten things down to be rock steady, I rely on the high speed flash to counter the effects of any vibration.

To color the flash, one or two of the colored "lenses"  from C6 LED Christmas lights are placed directly on the flash - like this: 

The gradient in the images is achieved by moving the flash slightly. Move the flash a few millimeters in one direction and the light will be dominated by the color of the globe. Move it a little too far in the other direction, and the color will be nil. But in the "just right" location, a nice gradient results.

The next possible snow here in Michigan is predicted to be later this week - hoping to continue with some experiments in lighting at that time.

For those interesting in seeing more snowflake photos, here is a gallery of 100 selected snowflake photos from 1999 through early 2015: 100 Snowflake Photos.

The snowflake photo above was made with a Pentax K-3, DFA 50mm macro reverse mounted on extension and maual flash.

Another attempt at extreme / stacked macro (click on the image for a larger file.) 

This is roughly 2.5x lifesized and was taken with a Pentax K-3, DFA 50mm f2.8 macro on extension tubes at f 4, AF360FGZ flash. The tubes have the contacts needed for lens to camera communication, I was able to use the flash in P-TTL mode.

This is a 70 image stack, combined in Zerene Stacker. In my last post I commented on comparing the results between stacking images in Zerene Stacker and Photoshop, with mixed results between the two. In this case Photoshop choked on combining these images - even after alloting 750 gigabytes of drive space in scratch disks, it ran out scratch space when trying to combine the 16 bit TIFF files. It did suceed with 8 it TIFFs, but with lots of halos and other issues. So in this case, the nod goes to Zerene Stacker.

Finding high quality insects subject this time of year is difficult - these stinkbugs are the only insects that seem to appear now an again during warm spells. In a few months I hope to be able to present some more interesting subjects.

(Click on the image for a larger view.)

I found the centipede dead on my porch last month - it probably ventured out during an unusually warm spell that we had and then was caught in the open when temperatures dropped back to their normal sub freezing levels. 

I don't think this technically can be described as "extreme macro" since the magnification was actually somewhat less than 1:1. 

The condition of the subject is a major limiting factor in this shot - in a few months I should be able to find invertebrates that in much better condition. But for now - January in frozen Michigan - I can only work with what I find...  I did stumble into another stinkbug and may give it a go soon.

This was shot with a Pentax K-3, A* 200mm f4 macro lens at f5.6, Vivitar extension tube (with contacts) and AF360FGZ flash. The tube served primarily to allow the camera to get clear of the focusing rails and the lens was set to less than its 1:1 maximum magnification, so the actual magnification was about 1:1 or even a little less.

This is 37 stacked exposures. I have been using both Zerene Stacker and also stacking in Photoshop CS6. The results seem to be equally divided between the two - in this case the the nod went to the stack merged in Potoshop CS6.