Photographing Water Droplets

The latest Strobist assignment to was photograph water droplets. Ideally you do this with a big pool of water, bring the camera on a tripod down to the level of the water, and use a really powerful zoom to get in really close.

I did this with a black garbage can in the bathtub. I was more worried about cleaning things up than about the photo. Real photographers probably have assistants to help clean or just have more time or energy. Or they don't have to try to get their shooting in during their baby's naptime.


The secret is the hardware clamp (available for $1 at Home Depot) to clamp the bag of water on to the shower caddy. Also, you need the water to drop from a high enough point to make it interesting, but at too high a height it just splatters and isn't really a droplet anymore.

The flash was placed below the level of the garbage can, and reflected in to the garbage can by bouncing off the blue square lid. The white balance on the camera was set to Tungsten to get the blue. These were taken with my 28mm macro lens at f11. This required me to basically rest the edge of the lens on the rim of the garbage can to try to fill the frame, and even then, these pictures were cropped. Other than cropping, these photos were not retouched.

Please remember, for deeper color, you need less light not more. More light in a clear container would have yielded very light results as more light results in a whiter light.
like this.

After numerous tries, the vast majority of which looked like a garbage can full of water, I was able to produce this.




A larger pool and more zoom would have gotten me closer to the level of the water. Also, different colored backgrounds could have been used behind the pool to add color to the photo, or I could have gelled the flash. Even with everything else, I doubt this would look right unless you were able to crop the photo.