Water Droplets

[ekkl]

Hi. Has anyone done any Water Droplet shots at all as I am looking at having a go. Going to give myself an evening when I get the time but would like some pointers as to what others have done and what settings to use.

Can anyone help or have you done any to post here?

[devilgas]

Re: Water Droplets

did this many years ago for a comp (cliche kitty) on another site



it's pretty cliche, so the 'trick' is to get a slant on the usual shots.

for the above i used droplets of fabric conditioner or milk (can't remember which). obviously it was lit by flash. shot in a darkened room to eradicate other light sources. iirc, the bowl was blue, hence the blue water, although this could always be done with food colouring. black backdrop. the hardest part was getting the drops to fall where the point of focus was. i used a hand-held syringe so it was pretty hit and miss. a better solution is to use clamps and pipette's from a chemistry lab as then the drops will hit the same patch of water each time.
it's then simply a case of keeping shooting until you capture the water droplets in an acceptable position. in all, takes about an hour or 2, although you may get lucky straight away.
manual focus and single shot mode with remote trigger. flash is mounted off camera - about level with the bowl and off to the right. camera is pretty close to the bowl of water so depth of field is shallow.
strictly speaking, you need to wait for the water ripples to dissipate between shots. as can be seen from the above i couldn't be bothered.

hope that's of some use?

[Graham_of_Rainham]

Re: Water Droplets

Or you buy a photogate delay trigger that fires the flash at a predetermined time after it has detected the droplet passing between the sensor.

The ready made ones are quite expensive, so I built my own from a kit.

http://www.hiviz.com/kits/spg.htm

[devilgas]

Re: Water Droplets

just had a butchers at the link graham. there is no delay with that circuit. it's an instant fire on the droplet passing. you'd need a 2nd 555 based circuit to provide the delay between the droplet passing through the gate and the signal for the flash to fire being given. that said, this is a much more accurate, repeatable and controllable way of triggering the exposure.
i detect a mini project on the way

[Graham_of_Rainham]

Re: Water Droplets

OK, but the link is only a couple of clicks away from the kit with a delay.

The best way to adjust the timing is to dial in an approximate delay then move the photogate up or down to get the desired effect.

The other great thing about this site is that they do other kits for sound triggers and all the circuits are there so you can modify what you have to make whatever you want.

I have thought about building a circuit that uses the droplet as a conductor and when it falls this breaks the circuit and starts the delay to the trigger. But that is more about electronics than photography.

http://www.hiviz.com/kits/spg-du.htm

[devilgas]

Re: Water Droplets

fair enough. didn't click beyond that. will have another butchers tonight and see about rigging something together.
problem with using the droplet as a conductor is that you'll disrupt the falling of the drop, potentially breaking it up in the process.

[Graham_of_Rainham]

Re: Water Droplets

fair enough. didn't click beyond that. will have another butchers tonight and see about rigging something together.
problem with using the droplet as a conductor is that you'll disrupt the falling of the drop, potentially breaking it up in the process.

Ah! but the trick is to have the droplet suspended at the end of a syringe that has a conductor in the drop then you add just enough liquid to make the droplet fall from the conductor, which breaks the circuit

If I get time, I'll post a picture