Object into water drop - best splash technique ??

[astroNikon]

I'm fiddling around with a concept of dropping a cherry into colored water. (or any object, I figured the cherry wouldn't break the glass like a marble would).

But I've been trying to figure out the mechanics of having those elegant splashes, and not simply a "wave". water height, object speed (throwing down instead of dropping), glass shape ... kinda fishing for concepts right now

I'm just using a d7000, SU800 on REPEAT (on the mutli shots), and 1 or 2 OCF SB800s
I already know I need a dark background for best effects. But just trying to improve the concept right now.

Thanks

This is most of the splashes I get.


I even get "nice" ones like this


But I want splashes more like this, consistently somehow


My objective is to do this in a REPEAT flash, so I can get a nice drop with the nice splash at the end


I've pretty much been able to trigger things when I want to, such as this so it seems doable.

 

[tirediron]

I think part of your issue is the container. What's happening (I think) is that the curve of the glass is forcing the "splash" into a particular pattern. Whenever I've done this, I found containers with shallow sides and more surface area to work better. I like your 'repeating' concept though; I've never tried that. I may have to drag the 'splash' kit outside and try that this weekend.

This is a martini glass, very shallow and about 5" in diameter:

And this is a clear class "cube" about 8x8x8

The nice thing about using the high-key approach is that if the splash isn't artistic enough, it's masked to a significant degree.

 

[vintagesnaps]

Try looking up the Edgerton center at MIT, lots of info. on stop action with drops, splashes, etc.

 

[astroNikon]

Interesting information.
My first attempts consisted of a shallow & wide small bowl. I used a little doohickie thing lol and got very big splashes. And actually it would bounce out of the bowl. But the object shape, as shown below, would have chaotically displaced water, thus the wild splashes.

I was thinking of this a bit more in relations to fluid dynamics ... i think to be repeatable the object has to be aero shaped too (or at least a cone on the top end), when the water is initially displaced, to bring it back to center and up. Thus a teardropped object might best make this repeatable. But then .. it's not round. Sooner or later I'll replace the object with the Moon or something like that



I'll figure something out.

the things we do when we're home sick from work ...

 

[astroNikon]

And this is a clear class "cube" about 8x8x8

The nice thing about using the high-key approach is that if the splash isn't artistic enough, it's masked to a significant degree.

Love the colored dice objects.

 

[xzyragon]

The dice shot is awesome!

And i tried this recently as well, and am looking for a better background / wider body of water to drop stuff in. But I found that the shape of the object and the shape of your container affect your splashes, and the timing at which you flash the splash is going to greatly affect it as well.

This was a large 1.5" diameter with .5" hollow cylinder dropped from 2 feet into the wine glass
IMG_8741 by christophercoxphoto, on Flickr


and this was a .5" diameter cylinder dropped into a wine glass from the same height, with more water in the glass
IMG_8768 by christophercoxphoto, on Flickr

granted my aim was also poor, so if you're trying to make it into a wine glass and get perfect shots, you might want to rig something up to accurately drop the cherry (or marble or whatever you're going to use).

 

[minicoop1985]

Ugh, now you guys have me needing to do more of these. Guess it's good that I kept that fish tank...

Whatever you use, make sure you can easily retrieve it without dripping water where you don't want it. That nickel was a bastard.