This Special Camera Captures Delicate Snowflakes As HD As Possible

Renowned photographer Nathan Myhrvold developed a special camera to shoot delicate snowflakes in high definition. He was able to capture stunning images of snowflakes, and their every intricate detail. The process was not as easy as pulling out your phone camera and clicking the camera button, no! Myhrvold had to consider a lot of factors, such as temperature and the type of lens he would use, as My Modern Met details:

To get these perfect shots—available now as prints at the Modernist Cuisine Gallery—many factors had to be perfectly calibrated. To avoid melting or sublimation of the snowflakes, the images were shot on location in Fairbanks, Alaska and Yellowknife, Northwest Territories, Canada. Myhrvold used a special camera of his own design. He combined the magnifying power of a microscopic lens (as typically used in snowflake photography) with a specially designed optical path. This path allowed the lens to channel its image to a medium-format digital sensor—which provided the stunningly high level of resolution. In addition, the camera featured a cooling stage upon which the tiny specimens could rest. With LED short-pulse lights and a shutter speed of less than 500 microseconds, Myhrvold was able to capture multiple images of each snowflake at different focal lengths. These images were then stacked to create the final image.

The scientific precision which enabled Myhrvold to create this unique snowflake camera is a hallmark of his varied career. With a PhD in Physics from Princeton, as well as two master's degrees, he did his postdoctoral research on quantum field theory with Stephen Hawking at Cambridge University. The young scientist then began his own software company, before working for Microsoft as chief technology officer alongside founder Bill Gates.