Point and Shoot Photomicrography

There have been several postings showing how Russian photographer Alexey Kljatov used some tape, a point and shoot camera, and an old 35mm film camera lens to build a wonderful photomicrography setup.  (described in http://www.boredpanda.com/snowflake-macro-photography-diy-alexey-kljatov/).  I had spent quite a bit of time over the past three winters trying to capture snowflakes the hard way (using a microscope with a camera attachment).  The problem with a microscope setup is that it must be allowed to cool down so that the stage will not melt the specimens.  The beauty of Alexey's setup is that the auto-focus for the point and shoot camera could be used!  Another thing he points out is that using the time delay on the shutter will eliminate most camera "jiggle" problems.  I set mine to 2 second delay and it seems to work well.

To improve on his design, I realized that a neoprene plumbing connector could be used to build the light-tight fitting necessary to align the 35mm film camera lens to the point and shoot camera.  For my setup I used a Canon SX160  point and shoot camera ($59.99) and a Canon 50mm lens from an old film camera I no longer use.  The 50 mm lens must be mounted reversed in front of the SX160 lens, and there must be clearance so that the point and shoot can be set to maximum telephoto (16X in this case; ~80mm fl).  The three components are held together using simple ring clamps as shown below:

The final configuration is shown in the next photo.

Note that you are seeing the back of the lens from the 35mm film camera!

There are several ways to get the subject in the proper range for the autofocus to work.  One simple way is to use a glass plate with blocks to elevate it such that the subject will autofocus when the camera is simply placed with the lens on the plate.  The samples can then be shifted around under the glass plate, or the camera can be slid to the proper place on the plate.

A better way is to use a tripod that allows you to invert the head (so that the camera is mounted inside the tripod).  This is the technique I used, as shown in the figure below.

The nice thing about this setup is that if you are wanting to try snowflake photography, you can leave the camera and tripod in the warm house until you find nice snowflakes and then bring it out for the photography!

Here are some examples of snowflakes taken during the past winter:

I especially like the column snowflake in the last image.  You will note that the major problem you will encounter is that while the camera will auto focus, the depth of field is so shallow that even a slight tilt will result in out of focus areas.

Don' be afraid to try things other than snowflakes!