how to take a photo of a falling droplet

Dear everyone!
I often get asked how I got this photo of a falling droplet showing a refraction of a cherry blossom in it, so I thought I might copy a tutorial I wrote on devArt about it.
It’s not hard, once you know how to set up, and all you need is a camera, a tripod and an off camera flash. So here it goes:

EQUIPMENT

– a tripod (i use Manfrotto with rotating head)
– a camera (this is shot with Nikon d300)
– a macro lens (i used Tamron 1:1 90mm, but you could use any other macro lens, reverse a lens or use extension tubes)
– a background (this was white kimono with cherry blossom stitching on the back)
– off camera flash (this was nikon sb800)
– sink and the tap
– some natural light (through the window or something)

TECHNIQUE

Wrap the background around and underneath the tap so that the part you want refracted in the drop clearly shows. It will be probably about 10-20cm away from where drop will be.
Remember that the refraction shows upside down, so if you intend to keep the orientation of the image, flip it upside down to refract the right way up in the drop.
Let the tap drip slowly. Position the camera on a tripod and frame the shot nicely, you may choose to crop it later but sometimes the uncropped shot can look really nice, like this one

Meter your light and take a few test shots of your finger under the dripping tap, so that you actually focus on where the drop will be. Use manual focus only, and adjust focus on the finger because that will mean that the drop in the same position will be also in focus. Now try to catch that elusive drop :)
Test your flash setting an see what works well in relation to ambient lighting coming from the window and the room (kitchen in my case :)). You may have to adjust flash settings as the ambient light changes if it changes quickly or you shoot for a long time, so in any case, see what works.
This time I had some frontal flash because it was needed to set off the off camera flash (I didn’t have Pocket Wizards or a synch cord then. Still don’t have a synch cord because I heard it can ruin your camera if something goes wrong with the electrics) but keep that frontal flash to a minimum.
Hand hold the flash (remote setting, camera on Manual flash, then they’ll synch) and shoot changing flash position until you find what works best.

Start taking pictures, if you have continuous shooting function on your camera, use it, you’ll get the photo you want a lot sooner.
Experiment with your aperture as much as you can considering you have to use fairly fast shutter speeds (200 and above).
If you lower your aperture to 4 or 5.6, you will get a blurry background like in a Glitter picture, but I usually use higher apertures 9-16 or even higher, so that the image in the drop has good depth of field. This is an example of f 45

In a way, treat the refraction in the drop as a photo on its own, and see how you want to shoot it.
Shoot in RAW, if at all possible.

PROCESSING

All three photos above were converted from RAW in PS Elements, but in the last few months I use CS3. I encourage you to play with levels, colour and white balance, exposure, brightness etc adjustments, before you open it in PS. You’ll often find that that’s enough processing, like in Glitter picture.
The Cherry Blossom picture was further cropped in PS to add the flower in the background to the frame, and to increase the size of the drop.
The drop was isolated with quick selection tool and sharpened using Unsharp mask once.
Finished!

WHAT WOULD I DO DIFFERENT?

1. Use Pocket Wizards, they wirelessly synch the camera and off camera flashes, so you don’t have to have frontal light.
2. Use extension tubes, so that this shot can be fully framed by the camera. Here is an example of how close you can get, so you don’t need to crop later and lose resolution.

3. Post processing. If i had Noise Ninja and CS3 I would sharpen the drop using High Pass filter, and reduce the noise better using Noise Ninja plug in.

I hope this helps! If you have any questions, please feel free to ask, and good luck shooting those drops :))

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Tags:

droplet, macro, photography and tutorial