TUTORIAL ON WATER DROPLET PHOTOGRAPHY

BYChiragChitvan

chiragchitvan@gmail.com

Orkut Link : http://www.orkut.co.in/Main#Profile.aspx?rl=mp&uid=9508388547780055473http://www.facebook.com/chiragchitvan http://www.flickr.com/photos/chitvan/

©ChiragChitvan Parmar

More Water Droplet Shots are herehttp://www.orkut.co.in/Main#Album?uid=9508388547780055473&aid=1229725543

Hello Everybody,

See some snaps here...

My Latest Clicks

My Stock Photography Stuffs

All above images captured from Canon Powershot A570IS,Its a Point & Shoot camera..,You can capture same snaps from your compact camera...you need camera with full manual control.

T hese are my very first water droplet shots...

its not hard to capture this type of shots...you have to work on timing to get perfect shot...

May be in some shots you will get image without water drop..may be already fallen & still in water tap..like these...

So you need to take some shots to get perfect...

keep your camera steady & focus correctly.,its hard to focus on falling drop.,so i always use trick....first focused on water tap then lock focus.,then slightly down camera parallel to the direction of falling drop...Then take 10 to 20 shots to get perfect shot...

Settings I used

The settings i used for snaps like above..The setting i used...ISO: lowest..mine was 80,shutter speed: 1/500 to 1/400,(1/2000 for those user who are familiar with CHDK),Aperture :F/8(narrowest Aperture....)Flash:ON(there are three different level Flash in Manual mode in my camera..i used middle level),

Focus: Manual Focus Lock(all shots taken with manual shot..)

I have taken all these shots from distance of 5-7 cm...find your camera's minimum macro distance and shoot from minimum distance...(my cam has 5cm)you can see background is little bright in my shots...because its only 1feet distance between water tap & background...you can choose distance whatever you like...

Now see some different type of shots...

These are different droplet shots...captured splashed drop..Used same settings what i used for previous shots..

But little difference here,you can't capture these type of images from 3-5 cm distance,because it may wet or damage your camera after splashing water drop.So i used macro mode with Optical Zoom to keep safe distance then Lock Focus in manual mode.

find out the minimum distance where your camera can focus after optical zoom...then lock it.

Here do the same....take some shots until you get perfect one,Auto focus is can`t much help in focusing water...So keep any solid thing at place.....where drops falling then focus...and lock(Do Focus Lock) it...

How to use “Focus Lock”.... For Canon Users....

I didn't care about background & angle too for above images...you can try with different angles & backgrounds.

See here i changed angle to avoid background.

____________________________________________________________SOME SHOTS WITH SOME EXPERIMENTS...

For above snaps i used white chart paper as background,Used metal dish as container with full of water,To avoid reflection from inside the dish i used dark water...by black ink.Used a drink straw to make falling drops...by closing one end with finger & released it to make falling drops.

You can find some reflections in above shots form the edge of container...See the below snaps i have captured before a week after changing angle & correcting it.

Setup

some shots in above setupno any editing in below shots..

in above shot I used custom white balanceI used MILK DROPS here

below shots with auto white balance...with no editing...

same snaps with some editing.....

Now see some Water Drop Collision shots...

see above shots....these are water drop collision shots....for these type of shots you need continues water flow...approx 10 drops per second...as we cant count that much speed but you can just guess...

go through this link & see that video...it will show u how to capture this type of shots...see at 5:30 minute...

this is water drop collision video - Discovery channel - 5:30 minutehttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VoQ0DQpwwHU

I used normal drink straw for my previous shots,but this needed continues falling drops...,so I used glucose bottle with syringe in it...it helps to control water flow very well.

Let me know if you have any suggestions for improving this Tutorial...

To Be Continue...