Oil and water

jwbryson1 · Jan 25, 2012

cpeay said:
Get a colorful piece of paper, a picture or anything with color. Place it on a surface. Get a glass baking pan and fill it with about one inch of water. Place the glass pan on the colored paper. Drop drops of vegetable oil in the water. Use your macro lens, if you have one, and start shooting pictures.

I might add that you should set this up with the camera on a tripod pointing directly down through the glass bowl and a macro lens is a must. The hardest part is nailing the focus and on your shots I think the focus is pretty soft. I like the colors but I'd work some of nailing the focus. You can also elevate the baking dish above the ground by propping it between 2 large glasses filled with water and this will allow you to quickly change the colors underneath the dish. I use colorful t-shirts in my shots.

Example:

Ocho_1 · Jan 25, 2012

Very cool indeed.

NebraskaNewGirl · Jan 25, 2012

After seeing this in the Exposure book I'm reading (as referenced earlier), I was going to try this tonight, too. Looks fun and the images are way cool. Good job!

mishele · Jan 25, 2012

I tried this and used oil and vinegar. I thought it worked better...=)
Fun shots!!

NebraskaNewGirl · Jan 25, 2012

My rendition. I do not have tubes, so I wasn't able to get in as close as I wanted. And getting the crisp focus was difficult as well. But I'm quite pleased with my efforts and had fun.

cpeay · Jan 26, 2012

Very nice

jwbryson1 · Jan 26, 2012

Very cool. I've found the best way to get focus "spot on" is to fill the glass dish with enough water to submerge an AA or AAA battery standing on end so the top of the battery is right at the top of the water. Then I use a single point focus on my D90 and focus on the end of the battery. Then all you have to do is remove the battery, add your oil and start shooting.

Hope that helps.