High-speed water droplets photography

Monday 23 December 2024, 19:36 by Tromp Willem van Urk | 14,767 views | 4 comments

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

I can't be the only photographer who enjoys trying something new regularly. One of the subjects that has been on my wish list for a long time is water droplet photography.

Years ago, I had already made an attempt. However, I didn't get any further than one drop with a 'simple' water column.

Last month, I made another attempt. With a professional dropper, I finally managed to photograph the familiar little umbrella!

High-speed photography

Photographing water droplets is a form of high-speed photography. Contrary to what the name might suggest, it isn't the shutter speed that determines your photo.

For a reasonably sharp droplet, you would have to use very short shutter speeds. And even then, the question is whether it will work, and you certainly won't have enough light.

The trick is to freeze the droplet with flash light. All you need to do is darken the studio and fire your flashgun at the right moment. This makes it possible to 'freeze' the photo at less than one ten-thousandth of a second.

Water droplets with slightly different timing, and therefore no collision

My first attempts

As mentioned, I had already made an attempt years ago. My studio setup, on the kitchen table, was still very simple at the time. It came down to roughly the following:

• A container of water with a dropper above it. A plastic bag filled with water and a small hole already works well;
• A background behind the container of water, aimed at by the flash. The flash is therefore not aimed directly at the droplet;
• Camera on a tripod, preferably with a macro lens;
• Manual focusing beforehand. With a ruler over the container of water, you can focus precisely on the spot where the droplet falls. Then remove the ruler and you don't need to change the focus again;
• Using a cable release for the flash;
• The camera's shutter speed set to at least one second, or otherwise bulb mode;
• A dark room.

With this setup, you can already get started. Make sure you can just see the falling droplet, and try to fire the flash with the cable release exactly during 'the splash'.

Column created by a single water droplet
Although I had a lot of fun with my water droplet photos at the time, there were limitations. No matter how well you time it, you still need many dozens of attempts for one successful photo. And you are taking photos with a single droplet. You can't get beyond the 'simple' little column.

The little umbrella

You create the little umbrella with two droplets. If the second droplet falls onto the top of the 'column' at exactly the right moment, it breaks apart and you get the desired effect.

The condition for this is that you must be able to control the timing of the droplets precisely. The timing is then accurate to the millisecond.

Little umbrella created by two colliding water droplets
A manual setup therefore won't work. To photograph little umbrellas, you need special equipment. And recently, some very nice little devices have become available for exactly this purpose.

Miops

I bought the 'Miops Splash waterdruppel kit'. It controls your camera and flash at the same time. The dropper itself is operated via Bluetooth from an app on your phone.

Possibilities with the Miops water dropper

The possibilities with the Miops water dropper are almost limitless. You can set up to four droplets with different sizes and interval times.

You can control not only the 'droplets', but also create very different backgrounds and colour combinations with multiple flashes and different colour filters.

And if that isn't enough, you can also give the droplets themselves their own colour with a suitable water dye. Plenty of variations, then. I had a great time with it over several evenings.

Stock photos

I have written several previous articles about stock photography on this website. So an interesting question is whether my water droplet photos are suitable as stock photos.

I have already put some water droplet photos up for sale as stock photos. But to be honest, I don't think this type of photo will earn much.

After all, there are already many photos like this, and they are certainly just as beautiful as mine. So I will undoubtedly sell one occasionally. But if I wanted to recoup 'the costs' of this project with them, I should never have started it.

It sounds contradictory, but the best-selling stock photos are often the everyday photos you take all around you. If you want to earn some money with stock photography, you don't need to start droplet projects for it.

Water droplets with red dye / Water droplets with variation in viewpoint
Read this blog again: Stock photography, which photos are suitable? But water droplet photography is simply great fun. So I'll definitely give it another go!

Dit artikel is voor het laatst bijgewerkt op 23 december 2024.
De eerste publicatiedatum is vrijdag 14 februari 2020, 22:22.

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