The Oh So Elusive: Water Droplets

jsedlak

For 2 days straight I have been doing nothing but expirementing with water droplet shots... Here are a couple of the things I have learned...

My first shot, taken with the 24-105L at 105mm. Auto-Focus, four lights, f4 and ISO 1600. Here I learned that focus was wrong with auto-focusing and that I needed more light as well as lower ISO rating.


I moved to using onboard flash in normal mode. I soon realized that the camera (XTi) could not sync past 1/200sec. In this case I need at least 1/1500-1/2500sec shutter speed. I moved to the 50mm f/1.8 at f1.8.

I also moved to clear water because the darker colored water (although awesome looking) required a LOT more light than I could provide.

This one is at ISO200 and 1/2000s shutter with flash.


And now to my best shot. Moved to ISO400, rearranged the flash to bounce off some white shades that are pointed down. I also took off the diffuser here, and more importantly boosted aperature to f8.


So to cover what I have learned so far...

- Light is good, there is never enough light available. In the end I have 5 halogen lights and a direct-flash (nondiffused) bounced of shades that are pointed to reflect the light down to the bowl.

- Larger aperature is better. At f/1.8 the shots were easy to get, but the whole crown was never in focus due to DoF. Between f/5.6 and f/10 seems to be the sweet spot, especially on the nifty fifty.

- Manual Focus is the most important part! Focus on the dropping device manually where you are aiming to drop the water. AF will focus on the back of the bowl.

- The higher the shutter speed, the better. I admit that anything under 1/600 will yield pretty useless results with lots of blur. Between 1/2000 and 1/4000 seems to be the sweet spot, but generally the faster the better.

I am going to expirement more with clear water and then move onto things like milk, paint, etc. Adding more color as I get better and better at this...

Lord Vetinari

Good experimentation and excellent result in the last shot
One thing to try- you can use sync flash in a slightened darkened room with similar settings of around 1/200th,F8-F11 and say IS0400. The flash duration is much faster than 1/200th (more like 1/10000) so if there is not much other light that is your effective shutter speed.
Brian V.

DoctorIt

Lord Vetinari wrote:

One thing to try- you can use sync flash in a slightened darkened room with similar settings of around 1/200th,F8-F11 and say IS0400. The flash duration is much faster than 1/200th (more like 1/10000) so if there is not much other light that is your effective shutter speed.
Brian V.

I was just gonna say that... or very close to that.

Stopping down the power of your sync'ed flash is one of the best ways to really control shutter speed. Throw it manual and set it to 1/8 or even 1/32 and you can shoot at 1/125 s in a fairly dark room, and still stop the action of the falling water.

Awais Yaqub

Nice i liked 2nd

jsedlak

Thanks all!

DoctorIt wrote:

I was just gonna say that... or very close to that.

Stopping down the power of your sync'ed flash is one of the best ways to really control shutter speed. Throw it manual and set it to 1/8 or even 1/32 and you can shoot at 1/125 s in a fairly dark room, and still stop the action of the falling water.

Interesting idea that makes perfect sense! How little light do I need...? Like pitch black?

DoctorIt

jsedlak wrote:

Thanks all!



Interesting idea that makes perfect sense! How little light do I need...? Like pitch black?

not unless you like tripping over your equipment

Let's say a "normally" lit living room wouldn't have much of an effect on your exposure. Even at 1/32 power, your flash is still multiple X brighter than room light, especially at 1/125th of a second.

Look at the exif on this one, it might surprise you. It was shot in our family room with nothing but a reading lamp on in a far corner of the room for some ambient light. Flash (a shoe-mounted 580EX) did the rest.

Skippy

jsedlak wrote:

For 2 days straight I have been doing nothing but expirementing with water droplet shots... Here are a couple of the things I have learned...

I am going to expirement more with clear water and then move onto things like milk, paint, etc. Adding more color as I get better and better at this...

What a great post photographing water droplets is something many of us tried, I gave up trying for a CROWN, and opted for the drops dripping from the tap.

Glad you got a pleasing result in the end

I see Brian and Doc have giving you some great tips, and I will have to give this a try too, thank you for taking the time to show us how you conducted your experiement and what you learnt from it ... Skippy
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