Tim’s Ramblings

“So…what did you do on your Friday off?”

“…well…I went to the West Side Market and then took photos of water drops…”

“…um…what?”

Let me explain :)

You’ve seen those shots of water drops in print and commercials and such right? Well, turns out, you don’t need much to do it yourself! This ranks up there with the “moon photo” that I took a few weeks ago. It’s certainly not unique but I’ve always wanted to try it myself!

So. Here are some of the good ones! Each of these are linked to a bigger one so you can get a closer look. Cool huh?

Cool huh?? :)

The last two were taken with a different white balance. The first was with florescent light setting and the second with tungsten light setting. Neat effects without having to use any gels.

I saw how to do this on Strobist and had to give it a try!

Now for the technical stuff. You can skip this if you want but it’s a peek behind the scenes without having to go to Strobist and look for the article. Besides, I pretty much did everything they did anyway.

First off, the little dots that look kinda like bubble wrap that you see in the photo is actually the bottom of the paint tray that I was using… I found it in the garage… I should have picked one up at Lowes when I was there earlier today…

Anyway, here is a photo of the setup. Simple huh?

I filled up the paint tray with water. Black works best since it’s not super reflective and it’s a nice contrast to the flash. I had an old aluminum tripod so I used that to then clip a plastic bag with water it in over it. I then taped some paper onto a board and propped it up on some books and against the tripod so it was angled a bit downwards.

The only special thing you need is an off camera flash though you can probably do this with a really bright light too. You just need to aim it at the paper so it reflects downwards onto the water.

I mounted my camera onto my tripod and also hooked up my remote flash unit as well as a shutter switch so I won’t have to touch the camera to take the shots and it’s much easier standing off to the side so I can time the shots.

I used my 24-70mm f/2.8L lens set at an aperture of f/8 for good depth of field. The zoom was useful since I didn’t want any of my equipment too close to water… Most of my shots above are shot at 70mm though the w color ones are shot at 54mm.

The flash was set to manual at about 1/4 the output and since the synch speed is 1/250, that’s what I set my shutter speed to as well. ISO of 100 of course.

Once I had everything setup, I poked a tiiiiny hole in the plastic bag (make sure it’s tiny so it doesn’t come shooting out…how do I know?…well…yeah…I did it…) and then angled the camera so everything was in the frame. Then I used a pen and held it right where the water was dripping so I can focus on it. Once focused I turned off the auto focus and also made sure everything was on manual mode.

The rest is timing…and patience. Lots and lots of patience.

I did a combination of normal and high speed continuous shooting and shot off about 3 to 4 shots at a time before letting my flash recharge. I must have taken over 150 shots. Many are the same. The “crown” effect is incredibly difficult to take. It’s mostly just luck really… A bit of timing and lots and lots of luck.

But now I knwo I can do stuff like this, time to get creative!! Hmmm…what to do next… :)

Anyone with a DSLR and an off camera flash (or set it up with some bright lights, even one of those ridiculously bright flashlights will probably work) should give it a shot too!!