The Rain

[albo]

Anyone photograph the heavy rain? When you look at rain, you can see the drops as streaks flying to the ground, but with a camera, I pick up... Nothing! I can see why with a long exposure, but even with as short an exposure as the lighting circumstances will allow, not a drop...

I have a Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ20 (has manual exposure ability)

 

[shingfan]

Anyone photograph the heavy rain? When you look at rain, you can see the drops as streaks flying to the ground, but with a camera, I pick up... Nothing! I can see why with a long exposure, but even with as short an exposure as the lighting circumstances will allow, not a drop...

I have a Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ20 (has manual exposure ability)

how "short" are you referring to? like 1/2000 or 1/20?.....i'm pretty sure if your shutter is fast enough....you can catch the droplets with the correct focus.....try to find out the shutter speed that you were using....maybe we can get some hints from that

edit: most rain droplets have a size of about 1mm in diameter........without a macro.....it might be "hard" to see

 

[JDS]

I've never tried photographing raindrops as they fall... Do you know how fast your shutter was at its fastest?

Something to try, if you haven't already - get as much light as possible. Focusing will be hard too - try setting it to manual focus, and focus on something 2 or 3 feet away, then point it to the air and you'll be focused on drops the same distance away. Set it to shutter priority and set it as fast as you can without the entire image being underexposed. Lots of light is the key.

 

[LaFoto]

Well, I tried to capture rain off the boat we were on in our summer holidays, and did so on two occasions, both times it was absolutely pouring, the cloud cover was thick, hence there wasn't too much light about, and I took the first at f9 1/320 sec. and you see only little rain, though it was really pouring:

All you can really see is the many drops on the water surface.

The other example photo was also taken off the boat and feeling very ashamed I will also (for just this once!) show you the off-camera pic (all flaws possible combined there! ), taken at f8 and 1/80 sec:

and my first edit (which I would normally only ever show):

Try as I might, I could not bring the drops out any more.

I never put the flash against them ... I have seen flashed drops ... that looks funny!

 

[albo]

try to find out the shutter speed that you were using

I believe it was 1/320 of a second... ISO 400, f/2.8
At first I was assuming that a slow speed would create the streaks as each droplet passed through the air, but logically, I realised that this wouldn't happen because any given point in space spends a lot more time without a droplet in it...

 

[LaFoto]

Well, as you can see in my example pics, you see more rain in the 1/80 photo than in the 1/320 photo...

 

[burtharrris]

That might be true, but you can't deny the dark, untextured surface of the building helps the droplets stand out!

 

[ksmattfish]

Use a flash.

 

[Mike_E]

Use a flash. You will have to play with the power but start with it on manual at as low as it will go. This is going to freeze the drops as the flash goes off at about 8000 to 10000 /s.

For a blurred effect you are going to need the drops backbit in such a manner that the light is diffracted through them and towards your lens. This is most likely why you are having so much trouble capturing them.

mike