January 14th, 2010

Water is always great and today I played with it again…

Theme: Macro Abstract

Equipment: D40x, Sb-800, yellow gel (intense), tripod

Settings on camera:
Exposure:0.006 sec (1/160)
Aperture:f/14.0
Focal Length:55 mm (18-55mm)
ISO Speed:100
Exposure Bias:0 EV

The way I did this is not the most precise way to do it, but it’s a way to show that can be done with a little equipment as possible.

I’ve seen some videos about how to shoot water drops or water splashes but like a lot of people, I don’t have a lot of equipment so I have to do it with whatever I have handy and in theory you don’t need much.
At the beginning I was going to do this with a plastic bag (so the water would drop in the same spot) but I couldn’t find anything to hold it from above my setup, so that’s why I just held the bottle of water myself and tried to get the focus right =)

Materials: clear bowl, plastic bottle with cap, home made reflector. My regular reflector was too big for my setup so I used a home-made reflector (cardboard and aluminum paper).

-First I opened a small hole into the cap of the bottle (don’t try this at home =))

-I filled the bottle up completely with water and I just filled the clear bowl up a little more than half.

-Put the yellow gel on the SB-800 and pointed it at the reflector

-Set the camera on the tripod and tried some shots. At the beginning I had trouble finding the right focus and the best thing that worked for me was the plastic bottle (you can use a pen or something else to get the focus). I took a picture and locked the focus there.

-Once that I had my focus ready (after trying a lot) I started to shoot and shoot.

Links:
How to photograph a splash of water {link}