Water drop photography

Shutter speed 1/200 F22 ISO1600

In this post i am going to show you my way of photographing a water drop. This may seem a crude set up but it works and other than my camera gear, the set up is made by things i find around my house.

This technique seems tricky but it all boils down to how patient you are. This shoot I took 493 exposures and only kept 29 to edit further. After editing i was only really happy with 6 of them.

First of is the equipment i used in this shoot:

• Canon 500D
• 18-55mm lens
• 75-300mm lens
• Extension tubes
• Tripod
• yongnuo YN560
• Cable release
• Flash trigger
• reflector (in this case i used a cake board)
• Pyrex glass dish (only there to catch water spills)
• Clear drinking glass
• Ice cube bag (you could use any freezer bag as long as it doesn't have any holes)
• Backgrounds (in this shoot i used a sheet of wrapping paper, a pink towel and a flag)
• Some sort of frame (in this case i used the top section of a shoe rack)
• Box to support the flash
• A pen
• A towel
• O and of course water

To start off you need to set-up your make shift 'studio'.

at the back is my background, at the top the ice cube bag pegged to the shoe rack. left side  flash , right side cake board reflector, center glass full of water in the Pyrex dish

Fill the ice cube bag with water and put a small pin hole in one of the corners, peg it to the frame above the center of the glass. This will provide you with a steady stream of drops in the same place.

Set the flash above the rim of the glass pointing towards the reflector. I have it set to about 1/4 power as this means you get a shorter duration of flash therefore freezing the motion better.

Set the camera up on a tripod with a cable release. Zoom your lens to the furthest and manually focus to the nearest focus distance. To get the focus correct place your pen where the drops are falling then move your camera to get the best focus.

shutter speed 1/200 F5.6 ISO100

shutter speed 1/160 F22 ISO800

shutter speed 1/200 F22 ISO1600

shutter speed 1/200 F22 ISO1600

shutter speed 1/200 F22 ISO800