Snow Photography and Special Effects (DSLR Tutorial)

Equipment used in video:

• LED Lenser X21 Flashlight - This thing is a beast. Extremely reliable and bright. I use it all the time for all sorts of reasons. Definitely worth the investment. The X21 is that it is a continuous lighting solution, not a short burst of light like flashes are. Continuous lighting lengthens motion, flashes freeze motion.
• Nikon D300s DSLR  - This is just the camera I use. ANY DSLR can produce the results you see in the video.
• Sigma 17-50mm f2.8 Lens - I use this lens for pretty much all of my work.
• Manfrotto 055XPROB Tripod with Manfrotto 496RC2 BallHead - Mounting your camera to a tripod is absolutely essential in order to eliminate camera-shake.
• Optional: You can mount the X21 to a tripod by using an X21 tripod mount. When I was outside, I didn't want to lug around two big tripods for both my flashlight and camera, so I conveniently mounted the X21 to the Joby GP8-BHEN Gorillapod Focus with Ballhead X.

Here are the results:

Another idea I got only after it was done snowing would be to take a ~1 second exposure of the on-camera flash in burst mode, where it flashes rapidly multiple times. I'd love to try it at different speeds and show the results, I'm definitely thinking the faster speeds would look best. If you have a camera that has a burst flash mode feature.

Have fun!

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