A return to a classic-type snowflake, but I’m having a bit of fun with this one – it was shot on a Lumix GH5S! Why?
I have a GH5S here in studio for a video production project and I noticed it was snowing, so I figured I’d test out the camera, predominantly designed around video, to see how it handled snowflake photography. The proof is in the pudding, as it were. It handled itself just fine! Slightly lower resolution but with the highest quality pixels, it’s a very capable camera.
The GH5S is the video-focused version of the GH5, which itself was the flagship video micro four thirds lineup from Panasonic before the release of this camera. A resolution drop from 20MP to 12MP on a sensor designed to push the highest possible 4K video quality, what happens when I fill the frame with a snowflake for high-quality stills? This is the result, and I’m not surprised. In terms of quality over quantity it’s the best “small sensor” camera I’ve used.
Obviously twelve megapixels isn’t enough for most photographers these days, but this camera was not designed for photographers. It was an enjoyable experiment and the results show that it is a very capable camera. As a side note, I thought it would be interesting to see what Adobe’s new AI-powered “Enhance Details” feature for RAW files would do, and it made sense to explore this with a lower-resolution file. Guess what? It did absolutely nothing. I expected as much, since it’s not a landscape or cityscape of any kind that AI would have been trained on, and I doubt further advancements would yield better results. I’ll stick with the Perfect Resize tool from ON1 as well as their “structure” slider which really helps define the surface details in these snowflake photos. I’ve used both of those for every snowflake in this series!
Notice the rounded or pointed tips at the end of the branches? That’s a sure sign of sublimation! Snowflakes are constantly in flux – growing in the clouds and beginning to fade even before they hit the ground. If the cloud ceiling is high and if there is any wind, a snowflake photographed the instant it lands can look like this. That’s exactly what happened here. No matter how fast you are, these little gems don’t last for long! This is one of the reasons why I shoot handheld, so that I can work as quickly as possible to capture the most “complete” snowflakes.
No two snowflakes can be identical, and furthermore no single snowflake is ever identical to itself for more than an instance of time at the smallest measurements. While a snowflake shows the order we can find in nature, it also illustrates the utter chaos of the planet we call home when you spend enough time thinking about them. I certainly spend more time on the subject than most. :)
Just a heads-up that I have my 2019 workshop schedule posted here!
www.donkom.ca/workshops/ - some have already filled but there are still spots available including my Iceland tour which will be an absolute dream trip for photographers.
