Water Drop Photos

[Dbl]

This was started on another forum I visit and thought what the heck I will give it a try. Really not all that hard to do spent about 30 minutes and around 50 shots. Used coffee cup saucers of various colors on my kitchen table sitting on top of a gold reflector. Camera about 6 inches away and manually focused on a pen in the center of the dish, flash on a stand about 4 feet away set to anywhere from 1/64 to 1/32 power and fired with Pocket Wizards. F10, ISO 320, 1/160s I used shutter speed to set my ambient light exposure and varied aperture and ISO to get DOF and proper flash exposure. Wish I would have taken a set up shot, maybe latter if someone really wants to try this.

Just something a bit different to keep our minds off the cold weather. C&C more than welcome.

#1

#2

#3

#4

#5

[WifeKidsandDog]

These are great, I really like the first one. I've never tried water drops before, would love to see a pic of the set up if you do take one.

[DTro]

I like number 4. Great pics

[Dbl]

Thanks guys, Cheryl I will try and get a setup shot tomorrow for you and just add to this.

[WifeKidsandDog]

I'm looking at the shutter speed and thinking, how could that speed freeze the water drops, but I guess this is a case where the flash freezes the action?

[Dbl]

Its all about the flash...the shorter the duration, the less intense the flash. So that is one reason whey I used such low power settings. Fortunately, the intensity at the shortest duration, around 1/30,000 second, is sufficient when the flash can be placed within a few feet of the subject to stop very high speed objects. Shutter speed is only applicable to setting your ambient light levels. I could have used 1/8000s and the water drops still would exposed the same but the background light would have been black, even in bright light.

So I just picked a shutter speed to expose for the background lighting and just used aperture and ISO in combination to get proper exposure of the water drop and maintain some depth of field. Man I hope that isn't to confusing. The hardest concept for me when I started using flash off camera was the above concept, shutter speed sets ambient, aperture sets flash exposure if you keep the flash power and distance to the subject constant.

[mmeyer]

Dan those are really great. Number 4 is my favorite. That little sphere of water is really cool. They are all great. I was reading about those tonight as well. I'll have to try that sometime.

Did you use a macro lens?

Thanks for sharing

[Dbl]

Tried using a 70-200/2.8 but minimum focus distance from where I shot was to close so I put on a Tamron 28-75/2.8.

[finnbay]

Very cool, Dan. Always wondered how that was done. Maybe on the next -40 day I'll give it a try!

[WifeKidsandDog]

A while back I was reading a thread on a photo site and a guy had the most amazing hummingbird shots but the shutter speed was only 1/250 so people were curious how he got the shots with barely any motion blur. Anyway, he'd hauled his Alien Bees outside and got them that way -- the flash froze the action -- not the shutter speed. It took me a while to get my head around that one.

[reelemin]

Way COOL -

[buzzsaw]

You already know how impressed I was with these efforts!

[Steve Foss]

Great stuff, Dan.

[Lisa Almquist]

These are just beautiful! I'm a photographer wannabe so I don't post pics in this forum but I do collect Fiesta ware-is that what those saucers are?

[Dbl]

Lisa you are the one-mill.....ah...one-dollar winner! You have an eye for dishware. I was in a hurry and was just looking for some color, the collection of Fiestaware was close at hand. You might be a photographer wannabe but you should still post some shots. Lots of helpful folks here who can lend a hand in advancing your skills should you choose to want that.

[Paul]

um, i have fiesta ware as well in my household. (shh, don't tell)

Anyway I like those shots, Iwas just reading about that in a photo magazine the other night and thought it would be cool to try, but since I don't own the gear necessary guess I will have to wait. They are very cool.

[marine_man]

Great shots Dan!

marine_man

[Dbl]

Paul, you can do this with the flash on board the camera, just may take some more experimentation. You don't have as much control over the flash but I would still try it. If you have an external flash you can mount it on camera and just put it in a mnaual mode and dial it down. Don't have to have it located off camera at all.

It really is just another exercise in learning how flash interacts with all of your camera settings, plus it was just plain fun.

[Dbl]

Here is the setup shot. Pretty simple, There would be one more Pocket wizard on the camera but I was using it on my other camera to get this shot.