Water Drops - An Experiment

Forever n' Ever n' Always Photography posted a great tutorial on how to take pictures of water drops.  My first experiment did not go well! I think my biggest problem was I did this early this morning and there wasn't yet enough natural light for me to get my shutter speed as high as it needed to be.  I purposely underexposed some shots to get my shutter higher but it wasn't enough.  I opened my aperture wider to let in more light but this led to focusing problems! It seemed like I could get the faucet and the beginning of the drip in focus but I couldn't get the moving drops in focus! I think if I did this around enough light that I could close down my aperture to at least f/4 and still have a shutter speed 1/500 or higher I would have had better luck.  I will definitely try this again!

I set my camera in "continuous shot" mode for all these pictures and just held down the shutter.  First, I shot the faucet.  It seemed like I either got the beginning of a water drop or a straight line of water.  I couldnt seem to set my faucet at the right pace to get individual drops in air.



Then I tried focusing on the coffee cup in my sink, already full of water and catching these drops. Sure, I could've actually cleaned my sink first and then purposely set up a nice shot, but what's the fun in that?

I had slightly better luck with this but it was all too dark to really show the splashes I was getting.



Then I tried it vertically to get both the faucet and the cup in the shot. I focused on the faucet and then tried turning manual focus off so my camera wouldnt try to refocus during the shots. This worked better, but because my aperture was so wide open (I think I was shooting at f/2) I only got the faucet in focus and not the water drops! Again, if I had much more lovely light I could've done this at a higher aperture and I think I would've gotten better results.



If those little drops of water had actually been in focus, I really would've like those shots!

If I had to pick one favorite from what I consider to be a somewhat failed experiment I guess it would be this one. I like the tiny little splash marks it made and the splash seems to be focused decently.



I definitely learned a lot from this experiment. Light, light, light! I may try artificially lighting the scene too and see how that works. I think the key is a very fast shutter speed and a not too wide aperture! I think a macro lens might have helped me too so I could've gotten even closer. I shot these with a 50mm 1.8 lens. I would love to try this with a macro lens!

And "click it Up a Notch" is doing a "What I Learned this Week" Link up, so I'm joining in!

PS Two of my best friends have volunteered to let me practice a little portrait photography on them this weekend! I'm very excited about as they are beautiful girls and will be amazing models for me! Stay tuned to see how my first experiment with portrait photography comes out!