Rain Drop Reflections
The photo is of refraction of flowers through rain drops resting on a blade of grass. The flowers are Pink Supreme Roses, Yellow Garden Mums, and Red Garden Mums which are more of a maroon color. The flowers can be seen in the rain drops and also make up the blurred background.
As mentioned in other similar photos of mine, if you want to try this yourself, the camera lens, rain drops, and flowers all have to be lined up, or fairly close to it. It works best with a macro lens, but other lenses should work as well. Try different apertures. You want to shoot as wide open as possible (to get the nice background blur), while at the same time maintaining good focus on the grass leaf and drops. Before even turning on the camera, eyeball the position where the drops nicely refract the flowers, and that will be the approximate position of your lens.
[edit]
This is in reply to Elke who commented she has tried several times without getting a decent shot. I thought I would add my reply here so others could see it. There may be more detail than most will want to read. It is meant for those that actually want to try this.
The first time I took shots of raindrops was on my photo of drops on the leaves of flower buds (with the purple background). I noticed that one of the drops actually reflected the purple background, so tried to focus on that drop. Since then, I found that there are whole Flickr groups (lots of them) dedicated to drops and the reflections/refractions in them.
So I later tried with drops on a tall blade of grass, and never was able to even eyeball a refraction in the drops. As mentioned above, I believe everything needs to be lined up. This means that if the grass is low to the ground and the flowers are standing up above the grass, there is no way to get that refraction shot. However light bends passing through the drops, so this may not be entirely true. In any case, I thought I was all lined up, but was still unsuccessful at the time, and am not sure why.
I have tried 4 times since that unsuccessful attempt. In three of them, I was able to immediately eyeball the reflections/refraction. The first of the four were my two shots of drops on ornamental grass next to orange flowers (my favorite of all of them). In those, I found that depth of field is very important. You want to try to shoot as wide open as possible, so aim the camera so all the drops you want in focus are the same distance from the lens. If the blade of grass is at an angle, then that will cause problems.
My next shot was of drops on the underside of needles of a pine bough. That one seemed relatively easy because I didn't have to get very low. I also thought this shot had the clearest drops.
My most recent attempt is the shot above. It was taken on an overcast day. Parts of the drops are clear, but they seem more hazy along the edges. It wasn't a matter of focus. Either the drops were a little dirty, or more likely it was due to the sky being overcast.
On this last shot, I really saw how depth of field (DOF) comes into play. As I mentioned above, try different apertures (f-stops). But it's not just the aperture that affects DOF, it's also how close you are to the subject, in this case how close the lens is to the drop(s). Initially I was shooting at the minimum focus distance for my lens, which is just under a foot. Being this close gives a shallow DOF, which means better background blur. However, for a given aperture, being that close may mean that the entire drop is not in focus.
So for that same aperture, if you back up a foot or two, you will get more DOF. This means you may now get the drops all in focus, but the background will also be more in focus, so that the blur won't be as good. You may also need to do more cropping if you are further away. So the conclusion: you can't just experiment with different apertures for the best results, you also need to try at minimum focus distance and then from farther away.
Some other info/hints:
- The most difficult part is being able to eyeball the reflection. If you can do that, you should be able to get shots of it. However the quality of the shots will depend somewhat on your equipment (especially the lens) and very much on the depth of field that you achieve.
- On all of my drop photos, I always took lots of shots, usually 25-50. I viewed them on the LCD at 5x or more to check focus.
- My macro lens has IS (image stabilization) and all of my shots were without a tripod. If you don't have IS, then you need a tripod or other stable platform. A tripod won't work if you are shooting from so low that you need to be at ground level.
- I always used Manual focus.
Rain Drop Reflections
The photo is of refraction of flowers through rain drops resting on a blade of grass. The flowers are Pink Supreme Roses, Yellow Garden Mums, and Red Garden Mums which are more of a maroon color. The flowers can be seen in the rain drops and also make up the blurred background.
As mentioned in other similar photos of mine, if you want to try this yourself, the camera lens, rain drops, and flowers all have to be lined up, or fairly close to it. It works best with a macro lens, but other lenses should work as well. Try different apertures. You want to shoot as wide open as possible (to get the nice background blur), while at the same time maintaining good focus on the grass leaf and drops. Before even turning on the camera, eyeball the position where the drops nicely refract the flowers, and that will be the approximate position of your lens.
[edit]
This is in reply to Elke who commented she has tried several times without getting a decent shot. I thought I would add my reply here so others could see it. There may be more detail than most will want to read. It is meant for those that actually want to try this.
The first time I took shots of raindrops was on my photo of drops on the leaves of flower buds (with the purple background). I noticed that one of the drops actually reflected the purple background, so tried to focus on that drop. Since then, I found that there are whole Flickr groups (lots of them) dedicated to drops and the reflections/refractions in them.
So I later tried with drops on a tall blade of grass, and never was able to even eyeball a refraction in the drops. As mentioned above, I believe everything needs to be lined up. This means that if the grass is low to the ground and the flowers are standing up above the grass, there is no way to get that refraction shot. However light bends passing through the drops, so this may not be entirely true. In any case, I thought I was all lined up, but was still unsuccessful at the time, and am not sure why.
I have tried 4 times since that unsuccessful attempt. In three of them, I was able to immediately eyeball the reflections/refraction. The first of the four were my two shots of drops on ornamental grass next to orange flowers (my favorite of all of them). In those, I found that depth of field is very important. You want to try to shoot as wide open as possible, so aim the camera so all the drops you want in focus are the same distance from the lens. If the blade of grass is at an angle, then that will cause problems.
My next shot was of drops on the underside of needles of a pine bough. That one seemed relatively easy because I didn't have to get very low. I also thought this shot had the clearest drops.
My most recent attempt is the shot above. It was taken on an overcast day. Parts of the drops are clear, but they seem more hazy along the edges. It wasn't a matter of focus. Either the drops were a little dirty, or more likely it was due to the sky being overcast.
On this last shot, I really saw how depth of field (DOF) comes into play. As I mentioned above, try different apertures (f-stops). But it's not just the aperture that affects DOF, it's also how close you are to the subject, in this case how close the lens is to the drop(s). Initially I was shooting at the minimum focus distance for my lens, which is just under a foot. Being this close gives a shallow DOF, which means better background blur. However, for a given aperture, being that close may mean that the entire drop is not in focus.
So for that same aperture, if you back up a foot or two, you will get more DOF. This means you may now get the drops all in focus, but the background will also be more in focus, so that the blur won't be as good. You may also need to do more cropping if you are further away. So the conclusion: you can't just experiment with different apertures for the best results, you also need to try at minimum focus distance and then from farther away.
Some other info/hints:
- The most difficult part is being able to eyeball the reflection. If you can do that, you should be able to get shots of it. However the quality of the shots will depend somewhat on your equipment (especially the lens) and very much on the depth of field that you achieve.
- On all of my drop photos, I always took lots of shots, usually 25-50. I viewed them on the LCD at 5x or more to check focus.
- My macro lens has IS (image stabilization) and all of my shots were without a tripod. If you don't have IS, then you need a tripod or other stable platform. A tripod won't work if you are shooting from so low that you need to be at ground level.
- I always used Manual focus.