Everyone knows that snowflakes have six sides. If you take the time to look at them as they land on you, you can see for yourself. A couple days ago it occurred to me to try taking pictures of them with our digital camera. This produced some interesting pictures, but they were mostly blurry because I could not hold the camera still enough. Then my Dad made a simple stand to hold the camera. This made it very easy to get quite good pictures of your average snowflakes.
If you want to make the apparatus we used you will need two small pieces of wood, two screws, a bolt, some cardboard and some black velvet or other dark cloth. You need to find a 1/4-20 bolt that will fit into the hole at the bottom of your camera where the tripod adapter screws in (see picture below).
Screw the two pieces of wood together at right angles as shown below.
Tape the velvet to the cardboard to make a small “tray” about the size of the bottom board. Put the small velvet tray on the bottom board (see final picture). Get your camera and see how close you can have it to the tray and still get it to focus (use close focus mode). Our camera will go within ½” of the velvet tray. Mark where your camera is and estimate where the hole in the bottom of it is. Mark this spot and drill a hole there for the bolt. Put the bolt through and screw it into the camera. If your camera will focus nicely on the tray, you are ready to go. We drilled a hole in the top of the piece of wood for a handy place to store an Allen wrench for the bolt.
To use this device, go outside when it is snowing and catch some snowflakes on the velvet tray. As soon as you see a snowflake that has a distinct hexagonal shape, position it under the lens of the camera and use the display on your camera to center it in your camera’s field of view. Press the trigger button on your camera, make sure it focuses, and take your picture. You probably want to view your picture right away so that you can take another if it didn’t come out the first time.
If your tray is too large, like ours is, you may be annoyed to find that gorgeous snowflakes are landing on an area of the tray where you cannot get them under the camera. This is not too much of a problem because it is possible to move around snowflakes with tweezers-they are fairly sturdy. Be careful to first chill your tweezers or they will melt the flakes.
When you look at your pictures, you will probably want to zoom in to see your snowflakes in detail. The following pictures have been extensively cropped for easier viewing. I hope you enjoy them as much as I do. Have fun!
This post was written by my son, Jonathan. The top photo was taken by my husband; all of the others were taken by Jonathan. Thank you to Dawn for hosting this Field Day!
