High Speed Water Photography - 5 tips

ryanwaff · Jan 9, 2012

I havent done water drop photography in a while, but here are a few of my images from when i last did some

My setup included a baking tray filled with water, the water in both the tray and the dropper i added some green food colouring to, to add some interest.
For the background I placed coloured paper against the wall with a SB-600 flash set to slave. Camera used was a D-90, lens Nikkor 18 - 200mm VR. for a dropper i used an upturned coke bottle with a hole in the lid, balanced on a wooden spoon with a hole in the middle to allow for the water to drip through. To increase the rate of flow from the bottle, i made another hole at the top of the bottle and covered it with prestik. If you uncover the hole, the drip rate increases, cover it up and it slows down. Focusing, i used manual focus, placing my finger in the water where the drops were. Some one asked about lighting, one time i didnt have my flash and instead used two lamps aimed at my background for the reflections of the water, then i used another lamp aimed at the dripping water along with my cameras built in flash set to 1/2 power in commander mode. ( a hint with the flash. dont use TTL, because generally it reads your image as being to dark and as a result you will end up with blown highlights)

Hope this helps

if you have any more questions, i am more than willing to answer

studioCRAFT · Mar 13, 2012

love the tips. thanks!

tissa · Apr 30, 2012

Natural light, no flash, no set up background - a bowl and a glass on a table

shrayash29 · Jun 18, 2012

my first try!

FireDiva · Jun 30, 2012

Thank you all for your suggestions, this will help a great deal, terri and Bynx you've explained shooting water in a way that's understandable, the books I've read made it sound so confusing. BTW your shots are amazing.

Bynx · Jun 30, 2012

One thing I have discovered recently that the elusive umbrella shot cannot be done manually but is in fact done by a machine called a StopShot. It allows either one drop or two drops to fall, the time between the two drops can be set. You can control the height but the rest is automatic. When the drop(s) fall through an IR sensor which triggers the flash and camera to fire.

sm4him · Jun 30, 2012

I somehow have never seen this thread, but I'd seen the video jwbryson posted in a different thread some time ago, and used it to practice doing this. Since then, I've made a few adjustments to my technique (and in the process, turned my dining room table into a studio...good thing I live alone!).

But now I've got some great new ideas, based on some of the tips in this thread, especially some of the tips Bynx mentions, like the depth of the water and speed of the drip. So now I'm itching to give it another go!

kundalini · Jun 30, 2012

Oh man! I had a fairly long explaination of the process I went through to take water drop shots but TPF timed me out TWICE when I tried to submit the reply. Since this is a dedicated thread for water drop shots, I'll come back and edit this post later, but for now I'll just show the setup shots and some results.

Setup shot #1.....