Flower Drops. a culmination of recent inspiration

[zulu42]

Flower photography/refraction/macro/water drops/off cam flash

Please enjoy, C&C always welcome!

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[Jeff15]

Nice set but three and four for me......

 

[K9Kirk]

Pretty cool! I'm a little surprised that 1/320 can stop a falling drop and show any sharpness. Good job.

 

[PJM]

Awesome set. Love the colors in 1 and 6.

 

[Dean_Gretsch]

It almost looks like a lion's face looking upwards in the drop in #2. Very interesting. I hope you do more of these!

 

[zulu42]

Nice set but three and four for me......

Thanks Jeff

Pretty cool! I'm a little surprised that 1/320 can stop a falling drop and show any sharpness. Good job.

Thank you Kirk. I was surprised myself. 1/250 even does okay. Since 1/250 is my max flash sync speed, anything faster and parts of the frame are lost. Since these were going to be cropped anyway, I sacrificed about 10% of the frame to bump the shutter speed 1/3 stop. The hardest thing is getting the drops in focus.

Awesome set. Love the colors in 1 and 6.

Thank you!

It almost looks like a lion's face looking upwards in the drop in #2. Very interesting. I hope you do more of these!

Thanks! I love the random and abstract patterns water drops make. It's always exciting to zoom in and see what was captured.

 

[zulu42]

I sacrificed about 10% of the frame to bump the shutter speed 1/3 stop.

@K9Kirk I'm continuing my response after some thinking in hopes of posting more technically correct information. I had no need to bump the shutter speed!

Come to think of it... The shutter speed actually doesn't matter, right? It's the flash duration that stops the water drop. I could shoot at 1/60 and get the same sharpness-as long as the shutter isn't slow enough to start picking up ambient light. The traditional thinking of using shutter speed to stop motion changes when using flash.

 

[jcdeboever]

Good flash work. Beautiful set. The time it takes the flash to fire is incredibly short, much shorter than the sync speed of your camera’s shutter. Finding that ideal speed is dependent on the power of the flash.

 

[zulu42]

Good flash work. Beautiful set. The time it takes the flash to fire is incredibly short, much shorter than the sync speed of your camera’s shutter. Finding that ideal speed is dependent on the power of the flash.

Thank you very much JC. Always learning. Then forgetting. Then relearning.

Here's the high tech, precision setup. hardest thing for me is getting the drops to fall reliably in the pre set focus range. With refraction, the image in the drop can be way out of focus even if the drop is in focus. lots of trial and error.

 

[Designer]

Pretty cool! I'm a little surprised that 1/320 can stop a falling drop and show any sharpness.

When using flash, the time of exposure is actually the duration of the flash pop. The shutter speed (time of opening) has very little to do with the exposure, except to make the background go dark. There is no way falling water drops would be sharply in focus using only the shutter speed and ambient light. The duration of an electronic flash is mere milliseconds, depending on the power setting.

 

[zulu42]

I looked up the flash duration for my yongnuo speedlights. It's only specified at between 1/200 and 1/20000, no chart for duration at different power levels. I'm assuming it would be 1/200 at 1/1 power. In these shots both flashes were at 1/128 (lowest) power.

 

[K9Kirk]

Pretty cool! I'm a little surprised that 1/320 can stop a falling drop and show any sharpness.

When using flash, the time of exposure is actually the duration of the flash pop. The shutter speed (time of opening) has very little to do with the exposure, except to make the background go dark. There is no way falling water drops would be sharply in focus using only the shutter speed and ambient light. The duration of an electronic flash is mere milliseconds, depending on the power setting.

Thanks, that explains that! I'll no longer wander the earth in search of the answer like Grasshopper.

 

[otherprof]

Flower photography/refraction/macro/water drops/off cam flash

Please enjoy, C&C always welcome!

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BRAVO! More, please!

 

[SquarePeg]

Very cool and super difficult!

 

[zulu42]

Very cool and super difficult!

Thanks! Yes!

BRAVO! More, please!

Thank you very much. Okay, if you insist, a few more from the set