Beginning Photography

Another new technique today. Well, I say today, but I spent an hour at it last night and another couple of hours at it again today. Getting focus is HARD. The project: Water drops.

The technique is simplicity itself. Put water in a container, get something to drip water into it (in this case a tap), turn on the flash and snap away. The difficulties lie in two areas. Timing and focus. I’m shooting with a 55mm lens so I have to get in very close, making depth of field very small, probably nore more than 3 or 4mm. The drop is the imporant part, so it has to be in the focus plane. But, you can’t see where that is until the drop hits the water. The result is that you end up taking about 100 photos to get one good one.

The other issue is of course timing, water drops don’t last very long. Ideally this would be done in sunlight for a faster shutter speed and with a longer lens. The results wouldn’t be any better, but it would take less time to get a good one. This particular one is the only one with the cool reflection which is why it’s my favourite.

I’ve posted this one as a bit of an experiment, a slightly larger size image. If it looks crap I’ll go back to my normal size.