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Phographing Water Droplets - and other things
There are some photo subjects that everyone wants to take at least once, but that seem too tough. Drops of liquid striking the surface are one of these. I have seen dozens of tutorials and explanations of how they are done, and I am amazed at the difficulties people put in their own way. In reality, this is not a hard project to undertake, the results are always interesting, and sometimes quite beautiful. Do not be put off by techniques that suggest you have to build elaborate water droppers and timers, or have complicated camera equipment. The minimum equipment is a dripping tap, a camera and a bowl for the water to fall into. Then it’s just a matter of good timing and luck. But that isn’t the best way to go about it! Instead of fast reflexes and luck, I recommend a slightly more systematic approach, but one that is pretty easy to use. Once you have the basics, I will suggest some variations. Equipment - The basic equipment is a camera, tap and bowl, just as above. The way they are set up makes all the difference, and replacing the tap with a dropper is convenient. Here’s your equipment list:
Essential:
*Camera - any camera that can use flash.
*Bowl to catch the falling drops - the depth of the liquid in the bowl determines the shape of the rebounding drops; for classical crown shapes, the liquid should be shallow - a centimetre or less. To get column shapes, add more liquid. For ‘bouncing balls’ use a wide surface.
*Dropper - An eye dropper works well, and a plastic water bottle with a sports top is excellent (the kind you suck on). A plastic bottle with a hole in it is fine, too or a dishcloth (wet it and squeeze to get drops). And, of course, the tap works well and can be adjusted to give a drip at regular intervals. Useful Options:
*Tripod and cable release or equivalent
*External flash gun
*Backdrops -white or brightly coloured and shiny surfaces with bold patterns - it is possible to catch the colours and patterns in the water drop itself.
*Reflector or slave flash guns Set-up No.1 - Start with the bowl and a little water. With the camera on a tripod or firm support, look through the viewfinder and position the background so that it reflects strongly off the surface of the liquid. Use manual focus and place something in the path of the drop as a target to focus on (clear air or even the surface of the liquid will defeat you!). If you can’t use manual focus, you will have to use focus lock, take one picture and repeat the procedure for every shot; a major pain! Set an aperture of f/4 or larger; you want enough depth of field to keep the drop sharp while blurring the background. If you can’t control aperture manually, don’t worry about it, just keep the background out of shot. Set-up No. 2 - Instead of a backdrop, place the bowl on a colourful cloth, piece of patterned foil etc. and add a mirror above and out of shot to act as a reflector. Variations - Use a coloured bowl, of flash with coloured tissue over the head. Several flash guns can be “slaved” to go off together to light the drop and the background - none of these things is essential, just a bit of fun o add to the experiment. Taking the Shot: method 1 - Dim the room light and squeeze the cloth, bottle or dropper to send a drip on its way. Leave just enough light to see what you are doing, and use the lowest ISO you can. You are trying for a very long exposure. If you can set 2 or 3 seconds manually do so, and fire the flash manually as the drop falls. In the darkened room, your exposure will be determined by the flash duration, not by the shutter speed, so you are really getting 1/1000 sec. or faster. As it is about to hit the surface, squeeze the shutter release or trigger the flash. The strobe of the flash freezes the water drop mid-flight. If you have one or two slave flash guns, the effect is enhanced. Taking the Shot: method 1 - Set up as above without the flash. In a brightly lit area, focus as before and set a high shutter speed (1/1000 of faster) and set the camera to burst or continuous. As you release the drops, hold down the shutter release until they bounce. This is really only a practical approach with digital cameras. It is very hit-and-miss and burns a lot of film for the few successful shots it gets. Whichever approach you take, timing is the hardest thing, but with practice you will get quite good at catching the exact moment the drop rebounds off the pool surface. Interesting Variations - Water is the cheapest and in many ways best liquid to use. It takes on colours and patterns from the backdrops or coloured lights, and forms beautiful patterns while falling and on impact. Adding a little food colouring is neat variation, especially if the receiving fluid and the drop are different colours. A bit of gelatine can add viscosity for variation, and oil makes another set of options, whether as oil drop into water, water into oil, or oil into oil. Milk offers a whole new set of possibilities, and there is no need to limit yourself to dropping liquids into liquids: how about a dropping a bright, red cherry into milk? Or a white sugar cube into chocolate milk? Go and experiment! |
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Wonderful tips here! I need to try it out sometime.
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This intel was contributed by David Rich
David Rich
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May, 2012
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