photographing droplets

see also:

• macrophotography
• some interesting approaches to dew photography
• 13 Steps for Shooting the Perfect Water Droplet
• http://www.iso1200.com/2017/11/water-drop-photography-every-step-from.html

An antique clock within a drop (I took this using the Olympus E-M5 and Olympus ZD 50mm f/2.0 macro - no Photoshop just cropped and resized - see my blog post on how I did this)

• need a macro lens, preferably 1:1 macro (a 5x macro will allow a droplet to almost fill the frame), and use manual focus
• off-camera flash with a diffuser +/- white board to act as a reflector and provide fill-in light on the opposite side
• tripod, preferably with a macro rail to make focus easier
• background and a subject to be visible within the droplet placed behind the droplet
• droplets:
  • dew drops outdoors
  • try glycerin (“glycerol”) or glycerine and water indoors for a more stable, bigger, droplet
  • a syringe to drop the droplets
• shutter speed at flash sync (or can be slower if you wish ambient light to provide some background details)
• remote shutter release or self timer
• mirror lockup (not needed on mirrorless cameras obviously)
• experiment with aperture for adequate depth of field (DOF)
  • as using macro distances, aperture of f/8-16 may be needed for the droplet and hopefully will be sufficient to blur the subject behind the droplet
  • alternatively, shallower depth of field (DOF) can be used if one resorts to focus stacking, this will be more likely needed if one wishes to get multiple droplets in focus
    • WonderfulPhotos.com - focus stacking
• see also:
  • WonderfulPhotos.com - dew drops
  • Flickr tutorial
  • if you have a high speed camera set up then you can do something like these amazing shots by Marcus Reugels

one of my shots with the Panasonic GH-1 Micro Four Thirds camera with Olympus ZD 50mm f/2.0 macro

• requirements:
  • flash set to low output to achive very short flash exposures of 1/16,000th sec or shorter (eg. flash set to 1/32 or 1/64 output)
  • macro lens
  • ability to control droplet rate if you wish to image a 2nd droplet landing on the disturbance created by the first:
    • at 6 drops per second to create hat shapes.
    • at 10 drops per second you get mushroom shapes.
    • at 15 drops per second you get flying disc shapes.
  • increase viscosity to get smooth shapes which form longer before breaking up. eg. add guar gum.
• see Markus Reugels' imagery on Flickr

• https://www.dpreview.com/videos/8723415296/tutorial-how-to-shoot-a-martini-splash-photo-using-only-speedlights