Bored and armed with a camera

[inTempus]

I was bored last night and couldn't sleep. So I decided to do my first "water drop" photo... although it's a bit more than a drop. It's a bit of a splash I suppose.

I grabbed a glass from the kitchen and a bowl of ice cubes and headed to the studio. I used my Canon 1D Mark III (gets sold Saturday, so I'm looking for reasons to play with it) w/85mm lens and my 580EXII and 430EXII to do this shot. I dropped a Sto-Fen on both flashes. I put the 580 on a remote cord and sat it on a stool next to the camera which was on a tripod. I put the 430 to the left and behind the glass. Using the remote release I stood next to the glass and just out of frame then dropped the ice cubes in the water. I had to time things perfectly as I only got one shot as my flash recharge time doesn't allow for continuous mode firing.

It was fun. Now that I have the technique down, I will change up the backgrounds, get some gel's going and see if I can't do something a little more artistic/creative.

 

[CWN]

Splash seems a bit out of focus to me? Maybe just the resolution displayed...

Also, the splash getting cut off on top kind of bugs me as well as the tilt... if the tilt was due to the actual glass being tipped, that would be cool - but the illusion, not so much.

All in all a nice looking photo, just nothing amazing about it.

 

[inTempus]

Splash seems a bit out of focus to me? Maybe just the resolution displayed...

Also, the splash getting cut off on top kind of bugs me as well as the tilt... if the tilt was due to the actual glass being tipped, that would be cool - but the illusion, not so much.

All in all a nice looking photo, just nothing amazing about it.

It's not intended to be amazing, it was just practice on learning how to capture the action.

The blur of the drops at the top is the result of motion blur. The focus was set on the center of the glass (which is quite sharply in focus). The camera was set to f/10. The strobes were set to high-speed sync and the shutter was set to 1/1250 which apparently still wasn't fast enough to capture the fastest moving drops of water.

 

[CWN]

That's some fast moving water.

 

[IgsEMT]

:hail:I bow to thee master :thumbup:

 

[inTempus]

That's some fast moving water.

It could be a limit of the flash, the duration might be causing the blur. If we could get Derrel in here he could probably tell me if that's the case.

 

[itznfb]

That shot probably would be more interesting if done with a slow shutter.

 

[SrBiscuit]

see i like the tilt.

well lit...well captured.

 

[inTempus]

That shot probably would be more interesting if done with a slow shutter.

I did try that, I started off with 1/250 and worked my way up. The blur was too heavy for my tastes. I was thinking more like the Coke ads where the Coke is shooting out of the bottle and the liquid is perfectly frozen in time.

Do you find the little bit of motion blur in the shot above objectionable? Or do you think it looks good and could use a little more?

 

[Derrel]

The strobes were set to high-speed sync and the shutter was set to 1/1250 which apparently still wasn't fast enough to capture the fastest moving drops of water.

Not sure why you were using high speed synch mode indoors, since high speed synch mode does not stop motion--it actually tends to blur fast motion because there is not one,single burst of flash, but a rapid,almost continuous series of individual,low-powered flash pulsations at 50 KHz.

Of course, if you wanted to blur the splash a little bit, high speed synch mode was a good choice. Otherwise, at a small aperture like f/10 indoors, not much ambient light would have entered with the shutter set to 1/200 second, and the single, instantaneous flash would probably have been somewhere in the 1/3000 to 1/10,000 second duration time frame, I'm guessing.

 

[inTempus]

The strobes were set to high-speed sync and the shutter was set to 1/1250 which apparently still wasn't fast enough to capture the fastest moving drops of water.

Not sure why you were using high speed synch mode indoors, since high speed synch mode does not stop motion--it actually tends to blur fast motion because there is not one,single burst of flash, but a rapid,almost continuous series of individual,low-powered flash pulsations at 50 KHz.

Of course, if you wanted to blur the splash a little bit, high speed synch mode was a good choice. Otherwise, at a small aperture like f/10 indoors, not much ambient light would have entered with the shutter set to 1/200 second, and the single, instantaneous flash would probably have been somewhere in the 1/3000 to 1/10,000 second duration time frame, I'm guessing.

Thanks! I'll give it another whirl tonight or over the holiday. I assumed that the faster the shutter the better my chances of freezing motion. So I'm going to slow the shutter down again and get out of high-speed sync mode. After thinking about it I figured the blur was probably a result of the flash.

 

[CWN]

Wow, learn something new every day - I was going to mention motion blur but figured there's no way that water could move fast enough under those conditions.

Interested in seeing a re-shoot.

 

[TJ K]

Pretty cool, can't wait until I get my flash to try all of this stuff and just experiment with light. Any special reason for getting rid of the 1d are you getting the mk4 or just going to stick with the 5d.
tj

 

[Derrel]

My ISP is acting very,very weirdly this AM...I tried to access this post on flash durations earlier but it took like 25 minutes to access the page. It has a bunch of timing information.

The Rod And Cone: Flash Durations for Canon 580EX II and Vivitar 285HV

If the flash is reading something really close, the flash duration are very brief.

There's another web page here Canon Digital Learning Center - Speedlite 580EX II External Automatic Flash Exposure Sensor

that talks about the 580 EX-II's external flash sensor and the External metering: Manual and External Metering: Auto custom function capabilities.
He((, I didn't even know there was such a thing on the 580 EX-II, but I think setting the flash up using this might be helpful in getting different flash durations. The article states that:

"One thing for experienced users to keep in mind is that the external sensor on the 580EX II measures a relatively narrow 20-degree angle of view. This never changes, regardless of the lens that’s on the camera (a fundamental advantage of TTL flash metering). The 20-degree view means the flash measures an area that’s about the same as that covered by a 135mm lens (on a full-frame camera). This may be a “tighter” metering area than what users may be accustomed to with previous-generation “thyristor” flash units. Keep this in mind when evaluating flash exposures in external sensor mode."

 

[itznfb]

That shot probably would be more interesting if done with a slow shutter.

I did try that, I started off with 1/250 and worked my way up. The blur was too heavy for my tastes. I was thinking more like the Coke ads where the Coke is shooting out of the bottle and the liquid is perfectly frozen in time.

Do you find the little bit of motion blur in the shot above objectionable? Or do you think it looks good and could use a little more?

I think your idea of going for completely frozen will probably work best.

I was thinking somewhere around a second to almost make it look like a tidal wave.