[Doundounba]

Last of the flake macros for this past winter. I shot about 1,900 frames over two hours at the end of a major snow storm on March 15th. Conditions were excellent and the flakes beautiful. In the end I've published what I felt were the best 12 photos from that day, each one a focus stack, using a total of 159 frames or about 8% of what I shot - not bad! This last one is a thirteen shot focus stack.

[Canada_Rockies]

Last of the flake macros for this past winter. I shot about 1,900 frames over two hours at the end of a major snow storm on March 15th. Conditions were excellent and the flakes beautiful. In the end I've published what I felt were the best 12 photos from that day, each one a focus stack, using a total of 159 frames or about 8% of what I shot - not bad! This last one is a thirteen shot focus stack.

Those are superb, as were all the previous shots. Thanks for these. I don't have the patience for this type of work, myself, so I can really appreciate the effort you put into them.

[radeon7750]

[taks]

another sunrise

[aslyfox]

Male Northern Cardinal Cardinalis cardinalis

[ the only type of Cardinal this life long Cub fan likes ]

K 3 + HD PENTAX-D FA 150-450mm F4.5-5.6 ED DC AW hand held

[joeblues]

Pentax K3 + Sigma 50-500mm f4,3-5,6 APO DG OS HSM

[royd63uk]

House Sparrow K3 and 150-450 at 450

Attached Images

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[aslyfox]

mating pair Trumpeter Swans at the Topeka Zoological Park

K 3 + HD PENTAX-D FA 150-450mm F4.5-5.6 ED DC AW hand held

[RAART]

Lake Ontario

[aslyfox]

more photos of Northern Cardinals Cardinalis cardinalis

[ the only type of Cardinal this life long Cub fan likes ]

1 - a female adult

K 3 + Smc PENTAX-DA 40mm F2.8 XS extremely cropped [ from 6016 x 4000 to 746 x 590 ]

2 - an adult male

K 3 + Smc PENTAX-DA 40mm F2.8 XS extremely cropped [ from 6016 x 4000 to 1118 x 529 pixels ]

[RAART]

from last weekend... first trillium this year
with Sigma 50mm 1.4 EX DG


TRILLIUM ERECTUS

[aslyfox]

House Sparrow K3 and 150-450 at 450

question

is that Sparrow establishing dominance over the other "bird" ????

[RAART]

[Doundounba]

Those are superb, as were all the previous shots. Thanks for these. I don't have the patience for this type of work, myself, so I can really appreciate the effort you put into them.

Thank you so much! What winds up requiring the most patience is waiting for a snowfall with good conditions at a time when I can shoot. Now that I'm using an external battery pack and my flash can keep up with the K-3 at 8.3fps, the shooting itself has become much more pleasurable. Just have to be careful with freezing fingers. (Photo gloves are not super warm even with the "finger tops" on.) Then the patience moves to the post-processing - shooting focus stacks at continuous high generates a metric ton of shots to go through in order to pick the most promising flakes. Then usually I'll have 3-10 stacks attempts per interesting flake, so lots of stacks to run through the stacking software (with the parameter tweaking and retouching there); then for each promising flake, pick the most successful stack (or two) out of the 3-10 attempts and go through final post processing...

I used to consider snowflake macros as just practice for shooting insects and spiders in the summer, but I'm developing a taste for it. I think that's at least partially because my flake shots have improved by a greater margin than my insect shots...

[bobbotron]

Crest of arms on an old (well for around here) building in Ottawa.