Create a mini-lens effect in a droplet

Tuesday 9 June 2020, 23:32 by Michelle Peeters | 9,869 views | 0 comments

This article was translated from Dutch with the help of AI. Read the original.

I came across an interesting article on the Canon website describing how you can use your macro lens to photograph flowers reflected in water droplets. By using the specific light refraction in your macro lens, you can quickly create breathtaking close-up photos. I decided to give it a try!

Glycerine works much better than water for making droplets. The droplets become thicker, shinier and stay attached to the stem for longer. This saves you a lot of shooting time.

What you need for this technique:

- A camera with a macro lens
- A tripod
- A remote control
- A flash, if needed (I used daylight)
- A flower
- A twig to hang some droplets from
- Glycerine (available from Kruitvat or a pharmacy) for making droplets
- A toothpick to attach the droplets to the twig

Method

Turn off image stabilisation, as you are working from a tripod. You can use live view if needed, so that the movement of the mirror does not cause camera shake. Also use a remote control, camera connect app or self-timer for maximum sharpness.

Next, position your camera with macro lens as close as possible to the droplet(s), at the shortest focus distance, so you get the best possible magnification. Water droplets remain small, even with the magnifying effect of a macro lens. I had to crop my image a little too.

See how close you can get while still being able to focus with autofocus switched on. Use a not-too-wide aperture, starting with f/8, so that you have at least one droplet in focus, with a beautiful reflection of the flower and sometimes the entire room in all its detail.

Then turn off autofocus and focus manually on the droplets. Move the flower in the background until the light refraction is shown sharply in the liquid.

The trick is to keep the flower in the background out of focus while the light refraction is sharp in the image. So keep moving the position of the flower in the background until it looks right. Keep the droplets parallel to the camera so that all the droplets stay sharp.

Extra effect

You can add a nice extra effect by combining two differently focused photos, one focused on the droplet and the other on the flower in the background, so that the outlines of the flower in the background become visible again. You can see this in the photo above.

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