Water Drops

After my Fruit in Bubbles shots, there was one other tutorial I've been wanting to try ever since I got my macro lens.  And that was capturing water drops dripping from my kitchen faucet!!

The tutorial I first read on how to do this suggested using a tripod with your focus manually locked off.  However my awesome 85mm Macro Lens didn't have a long enough focal length for this to work for me.  I just couldn't get my camera close enough to the water on a tripod for the shot to work out how I wanted.

So I ended up merely resting my camera on the edge of my sink.  I used my Nikon SB-600 Speedlight flash for these shots.  I played with the settings and ended up bouncing it off the sink a bit to get the right exposure.  I shot all these at f/5.6, sutter speed 1/200, ISO 400.  With those settings in my dark kitchen (I shot these at night) the flash was definitely necessary to get an exposure!

I picked up a bunch of cheap fabric scraps from the JoAnn's to use as backdrops.  I started with a blue patterned fabric.

I liked the shot but I was disappointed with how the background became this gradient blue.  Pretty, but I wanted the pattern to show up a bit more in the background and a lot more in the water drop.
So I switched to a purple fabric I picked up.





The pattern showed up much better in the drop but I still wanted more pattern in the background.

Next I tried a teal fabric I picked up merely because my bathroom is this color and I thought these water drops would make nice prints for my bathroom! haha :)






I liked this best so far! This will go up in my bathroom for sure! But what I really wanted was something bright and colorful. But alas, I was out of fabric choices. Not to be deterred I scoured my closet until I came across a bright polka dot skirt. Ding, ding, ding! These were my favorites for sure!











This last one is my favorite.



Because I wasn't using a tripod, focus was really tricky.  I auto focused right where the water was coming out of faucet (and later cropped the faucet out of the shot) and tried keep the camera still on the counter, flipped to manual focus, and held down the shutter for a few shots.  My awesome speedlight can usually flash about 5 times in a speedy row without having to recharge, so once my focus was locked off I just held down the shutter for a few shots and hoped I grabbed a good water drip.  Then, in case my camera moved, I auto focused again and started over.  Yes, this would've been much easier with a tripod, but it just didn't work in my case.  
Here's my set-up and my favorite resulting shot.  I love how a certain perspective and the right lens can turn my ugly kitchen sink into art!!



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I didn't use live view when I took the pics because it slows down my shutter timing, but I used it in my set up shot to show how I was focusing the camera. You can see I still have my tripod mount on the camera from my failed attempt at using my tripod! But the edge of the sink worked out just fine. I can't wait to try this with lots more patterned fabrics!!!!



Click HERE to see the (more successful!) PART 2 of this series!!!