Photographer and videographer Mathieu Stern likes to use strange and unconventional lenses in his work. His list includes many different unusual models, but the latest lens Stern decided to try out surpasses them all in its unconventionality, as it used a lens made from a piece of the purest ice.
“Taking pictures using an ice lens has been a dream of mine for 2 years. The research I did showed that no one had ever taken on this crazy idea, mainly because it was hard to find clean ice and even harder to get a clear image. So I had to abandon the idea because it was too complicated or borderline insane,” Stern says
To realize the idea, Stern and his friends traveled to an iceberg beach in Iceland, where they planned to find the desired piece of ice without any impurities. Because of the past storm, they had to wait several days for pieces of the iceberg to nestle closer to the shoreline.
It took Stern about six hours to make a working version of the lens, i.e.Some of the ice lenses broke off inside the body when inserted. The lens barrel was printed in advance on a 3D printer and the lens was made on location using a machine which shapes ice cocktail balls. It took about 45 minutes to make each lens, with Stern having to refine the device so that it could form chunks of ice into a hemisphere.
The hardest part of taking pictures with this lens was focusing, i.e.The lens gradually melted, completely disappearing in one minute. According to Stern, no cameras were damaged in this experiment, and he says the following about the results: “This project is a scientific, artistic and poetic project – I did not expect the result to be like photographs taken with modern lenses , but I was struck by the strange beauty of the images I made with the first lens with a 10,000-year-old iceberg lens “.
A video of Matthieu Stern’s experiment is available at youtube.com/watch?v=jWvwt3mCu68
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Wow, lens photography with an ice lens sounds fascinating! I’m curious to know, how does using a lens made of ice affect the quality and clarity of the photographs? Does the ice lens create any unique effects or distortions that you can’t achieve with a traditional lens?
This is a fascinating concept! I’m curious, how does the lens made of crystal-clear ice affect the quality of the photography? Would the photos have a unique aesthetic or would they be distorted in any way? Also, does this type of lens require any special precautions or considerations when using it? I’d love to know more about the process and potential results of lens photography with ice.