1st Attempt at Water Drops

dixonduke · February 6, 2011

I got my 1st ever macro lens this weekend as a birthday present to myself. Nikon 105mm f/2.8 VR.

Here are some shots that I am proud of. I will not even tell you how many I took, but the show off v. throw away ratio is embarrassing.

Your comments and/or critiques will only help me get better. Thanks for looking.

1.

2. This is 100% Crop.

3.

4.

5.

6.

7.

vivalaveritas · February 7, 2011

Very nice! #2 fav. #6 is great.

What light set up did you use?

Lord Vetinari · February 7, 2011

Excellent start with your macro lens - Great angles, colour and light- esp like 4,5 &6
Brian V.

jackiejay · February 7, 2011

wow great job nice work:)

peoorvendal · February 7, 2011

Beautiful lighting. #2 is my favorite too!

dixonduke · February 7, 2011

Thanks a lot y'all.

I am flattered.

My set up was a 10 inch pyrex baking dish suspended in my kitchen sink about flush with the counter top. Set up a small tube to drip water from a container over the baking dish. I had a SB600 away from the camera under the dish on the bottom of the sink fired up through the dish. I did have the flash in a ziplock baggie. I had a SB900 to the cameras right on the counter top firing at an oblique (Front Right to Back Left - towards the SB600). The color is from the baking dish, and I had a piece of black construction paper as my back ground.

vivalaveritas · February 8, 2011

Awesome. Very nice. I'm going to have to try this tonight.

peoorvendal · February 8, 2011

Thanks for sharing the setup!

FlyNavy · February 8, 2011

Very nice!

brvheart · February 8, 2011

WOW!! I need to pick up my jaw now!!

Rob Pauza · February 23, 2011

Very nice. I did a similar setup under the kitchen faucet, only using some studio strobes and gels . I got some pretty cool results, but I was having trouble keeping focus on the moving drops with my 1/250 flash sync speed (My usual sync is 1/125, but I was able to push it to 1/250 before I started getting curtain problems). How were you able to get such great focus using Speedlights? I used a Sigma 150 at f22.

Here's mine if you're interested.... http://robpauza.smugmug.com/Art/Water-Drops/15934164_yTSMo#1195113546_MhnEm

Once again... great job. Very well done. I may have to swipe your Pyrex under lighting idea.

And I too shot a ridiculous amount of photos to get only a few (hopefully) good ones.

-Rob

linda1111 · February 23, 2011

Excellent photos! Really good birthday gift to yourself.

PGM · February 24, 2011

Color, light, texture! Amazing! Best, Pam

dixonduke · February 25, 2011

Rob Pauza wrote: »

Very nice. I did a similar setup under the kitchen faucet, only using some studio strobes and gels . I got some pretty cool results, but I was having trouble keeping focus on the moving drops with my 1/250 flash sync speed (My usual sync is 1/125, but I was able to push it to 1/250 before I started getting curtain problems). How were you able to get such great focus using Speedlights? I used a Sigma 150 at f22.

Here's mine if you're interested.... http://robpauza.smugmug.com/Art/Water-Drops/15934164_yTSMo#1195113546_MhnEm

Once again... great job. Very well done. I may have to swipe your Pyrex under lighting idea. And I too shot a ridiculous amount of photos to get only a few (hopefully) good ones.

-Rob

Focus was tricky. I started this with the lens at f/2.8 and the DOF was so thin that I was having fits. So gradually I increased to f/13 maybe f/11 for most of the "good" shots. I also set my focus point and using live view moved my drip's front to back millimeter by millimeter to fine tune the focus. I was using a tube suspended above the sink to do this.

I also slowed my shutter speed down to 1/60 or so too. I started with 1/250 but not a single image was sharp. I ended up by trial and error, going faster than 1/250, even up to as fast as my camera will go 1/4000. Utilizing very bright garage work lights, and that wasn't much better. Eventually slowing my shutter down and getting away from work lights, and pulling out the flashes I was able to start to capture consistently better shots.

I wish I was better educated in this art to explain why a slow shutter got me better captures while still freezing the drops like they did. Hopefully some of the truly talented artists on here will be able to help us both out.

I checked out your gallery, those are really nice, how are you getting your color?

aj986s · February 25, 2011

dixonduke wrote: »

.......I wish I was better educated in this art to explain why a slow shutter got me better captures while still freezing the drops like they did. Hopefully some of the truly talented artists on here will be able to help us both out.....

I'm not an expert, but I recall doing somthing similar 30 years ago with my Canon FTb 35mm camera. I figured out that the flash fired much faster than my shutter ever could. After some trial and error, I got my best results in a subdued ambient lighting, and letting the flash handle all the lighting for the shot. Softer flash bursts also tended to be faster. So I believe in your case, you managed to have the flash regulate the "shutter speed" rather than the camera. The slower shutter speed simply helped you keep the shutter open longer to effectively catch a broader range of movement/action "opportunity" of your drops.

Very nice shots BTW! My favs are #3 and #6. What did you do to get the gold effect?

dixonduke · February 25, 2011

aj986s wrote: »

I'm not an expert, but I recall doing somthing similar 30 years ago with my Canon FTb 35mm camera. I figured out that the flash fired much faster than my shutter ever could. After some trial and error, I got my best results in a subdued ambient lighting, and letting the flash handle all the lighting for the shot. Softer flash bursts also tended to be faster. So I believe in your case, you managed to have the flash regulate the "shutter speed" rather than the camera. The slower shutter speed simply helped you keep the shutter open longer to effectively catch a broader range of movement/action "opportunity" of your drops.

Very nice shots BTW! My favs are #3 and #6. What did you do to get the gold effect?

That makes sense. It was night time and I had all the lights turned out so the kitchen was pretty much dark. The only light the camera saw was from the two flashes that were set to 1/16 power. No pun intended, but a light bulb did just go off in my head when I read your explanation. Thanks for sharing.

For the color, and set up. A 10" brown'ish colored pyrex glass baking dish. Suspended in the sink about flush with the counter top. I had a bare SB-600 fireing from the base of the sink up through the bottom of the baking dish. I had a SB-900 on the counter fireing at and oblique across the dish. I did put up a piece of black poster paper for a background, and the color is only from the reflected light coming through the dish. *NOTE* I did have the SB-600 protected from the water by placing it in a zip-lock bag.

I will take a photo of my setup one of these days, and stick it here in this thread.

Rob Pauza · February 25, 2011

dixonduke wrote: »

Focus was tricky. I started this with the lens at f/2.8 and the DOF was so thin that I was having fits. So gradually I increased to f/13 maybe f/11 for most of the "good" shots. I also set my focus point and using live view moved my drip's front to back millimeter by millimeter to fine tune the focus. I was using a tube suspended above the sink to do this.

I also slowed my shutter speed down to 1/60 or so too. I started with 1/250 but not a single image was sharp. I ended up by trial and error, going faster than 1/250, even up to as fast as my camera will go 1/4000. Utilizing very bright garage work lights, and that wasn't much better. Eventually slowing my shutter down and getting away from work lights, and pulling out the flashes I was able to start to capture consistently better shots.

I wish I was better educated in this art to explain why a slow shutter got me better captures while still freezing the drops like they did. Hopefully some of the truly talented artists on here will be able to help us both out.

I checked out your gallery, those are really nice, how are you getting your color?

I just read aj's explaination about the flash/shutter speeds. Seems to make sense. I was pretty shocked at having to go up so high in speed to capture a focused frame. - It was really messing with my tiny brain.

I'm going to go give it another go here in a few. I actually learned a lot from last night when the light bulb went off in my head about the high speed sync on my Speedlites. (I originally was using studio strobes which sync at 1/125... but I can actually get 1/250) The other light bulb that went off in my head (after the fact unfortunately) was about the focus plane of the lens that I really wasn't utilizing well by having my camera at such an angle. (i.e. -If the "drips" are perfectly vertical, then the closer my lens is to pointing perfectly perpendicular to them, the easier it will be to focus throughout the action line) -Hope that made sense.

For focus, I was using just the faucet running slightly to have an automatic focus point, then I just set it to manual and turned the faucet down to just a constant drip.

For the lighting, I'm just using two Canon Speedlites with red and blue gels...... nothing fancy. They are being controlled via a ST-E2 Transmitter on the hot shoe. It has a ratio function that makes it extremely quick and easy to change the Flash A:Flash B power.

dixonduke · February 27, 2011

Here is my set up for tonights attempts.

1. D90 with 105 f/2.8 VR on Tripod and Wired Remote
2. MBP running lightroom 3.3, utilizing the autoimport function. Camera connected to MBP is saving photos to a folder on HD.
3. Baking Dish filled with colored milk tonight.
4. SB-900 with diffuser
5. SB-600 bare
6. IV Bag filled with colored fluid (milk earlier now water)
7. Poster Paper (craft paper?) for backdrop
8. Toomey syringe and basins of fluid to refill IV bag
9. DIY frame originally built to use as a light box, now I find many more uses for it.

Rob Pauza · February 27, 2011

Wow, you went all out on that setup. I did some more tonight as well, and I was able to get nice sharp images finally... Woohoo! I don't want to hijack your thread, but I'll post a photo of my setup in my "Water Drops" thread. It's pretty basic.

Good luck. I can't wait to see your shots.

-Rob

GOLDENORFE · February 28, 2011

great series, like #4 &6 best.

i never tried this type of water drops

1st Attempt at Water Drops

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