Water Droplet Photos

[matic08]

wow those are some amazing shots guys. I've always loved those. I'm gonna try and get some this week.

 

[rmh159]

Thats a cool idea. Did you just have a bowl of regular water and dropped food coloring into it or something? I would end up wasting an entire bottle if I tried that. Really neat idea tho and something different.

Thanks! Yeah that's exactly what I did. I think that was one of the first drops too so I wanted to make sure I got a good shot before the water become red. Some of the later shots with the red water looked decent too.

 

[kravjitsu]

I took these yesterday they arent bad for a first try but most were out of focus. I really need to get a macro lens.

This one would be a lot cooler if it were in focus

 

[rmh159]

I shot mine with the 50mm 1.8 Nikon lens (in other words, not a macro). I think I shot around 2.8. To get the shots in focus (which only worked for maybe 10% of the shots) I put a ruler across the bowl and focused on that then switched to manual focus so the camera wouldn't try to refocus. I then put a penny in the bowl of water underneath the ruler so I'd know where I needed the drop to land.

It's still very hard to control the focus though. I think the best way to do it is just take a TON of pictures and hope you're "method" of focusing will give you a higher % of keepers.

I'd like to hear other people's methods for focusing.

 

[kravjitsu]

I was using a nikon AF nikkor 70-300mm so it doesn't have auto focus but thats a great idea. I was having a friend hold a pen in the water and then focusing in on it but when i was dropping the water i was just guessing the area the drop it in. Im gonna try your method later tonight or tomorrow. Do you think my VR AF-S nikkor 18-105 would work to take these?

 

[matt-l]

The third shot in a possible 10 shot series im thinking about.

This one's just a little OOF.
Canon 20D gripped
Canon 100mm 2.8 USM Macro
1/250th@2.8
ISO- 200
RAW
Bigger on Flickr in sig.

 

[kravjitsu]

Ok heres my second try using rmh159 method, i think they turned out a lot better.

 

[sftempest66]

Here's one or two I've done...

 

[NucleaRR]

I have always liked photos like these. Here is my contribution below. Critique if you'd like. I think there is a little too much noise in the background.

 

[Bunny 007]

Still an unfinished work-in-progress, but I have a little write-up on water droplet photography at Bunny 007 on Water Droplet Photography.

 

[Dusica]

I'm a newbie, and I've tried photographing water droplets, but I had the same problem as sftempest66, I couldn't get the tip of the droplet to be sharp. I've tried everything, changing shutter speed, changing aperture, focusing on different places... What was I doing wrong?

 

[Bunny 007]

I'm a newbie, and I've tried photographing water droplets, but I had the same problem as sftempest66, I couldn't get the tip of the droplet to be sharp. I've tried everything, changing shutter speed, changing aperture, focusing on different places... What was I doing wrong?

If it's sharp at the bottom, I'd hazard a guess that the top of the column is moving faster - what illumination are you using? [Shutter speed shouldn't make any difference with flash.] Could be a depth-of-field issue as well - what aperture? How big is your camera's s sensor?

 

[Bynx]

This shows a single drip cycle. But each shot is really a separate drip. It took about 200 shots to assemble the ones here.

 

[Arkanjel Imaging]

One from a couple of months ago.

I see some of you guys are just firing your flashes directly at your drop shots. That tends to make the light too harsh/directional. What you really need to do is bounce them off of white (or colored) panels. The more you can spread the light out the better these type of images will be.