Splash!
This is a photo of a drop of milk (actually half & half) splashing into food coloring. It took a while to figure out how to do splash photos, so thought I would share how it was done.
The photo was taken in total darkness (basement), with light from 2 Speedlite flashes fired remotely about 6-8 inches from the drops. Flash setting was using Manual mode at 1/16 power.
The surface is a piece of glass that I painted black and placed on a table. Black foam board sheets were placed on the back and sides of the work area. The milk drops were released from an eyedropper mounted above the black glass.
Use manual focus, so first you need to get a good focus. I did this by releasing a single drop from the eye dropper, then placed a flat head screw at the front of the drop, and used that to get my focus. Once you get the focus right, you shouldn't have to do this step again unless you move something.
Carefully add a couple other milk drops to the one that has splashed (use a different eye dropper, not the one that is mounted). Add a drop or two of food color. Now comes the hard part. With one hand, release one drop from the eye dropper, and with the other hand, release the shutter using a remote. At first I was able to capture a successful splash only about one out of 50 shots, but now I can do it about one out of 3. At the beginning, it's sometimes difficult to determine whether you are pressing the remote button too soon or too late.
You have to clean up the drops occasionally, as they get muddled. Re-apply a few drops of fresh milk and food color.
Sometimes the splashes are more crown shaped than the one shown above. Other times they are entirely small droplets. All make interesting photos.
A few hints:
- You need enough light to see the drop that you are releasing from the dropper. Since it was totally dark, I used one of those red light flashlights attached to an extra tripod. The red light was aimed directly at the dropper, trying to minimize the light falling at the splash surface. If you don't have one of those lights, they are also helpful when doing night photography. White light may give you too much ambient light.
- As mentioned, I used half & half (half milk and half cream). Skim milk is too thin. I didn't try whole milk, but that may be too thin as well. I got good results with the half & half, so did not try whole cream. That may be too thick.
- Try different food color drops. If using multiple colors together, you may want to try it without placing the drops on top of each other. Try the standard liquid food coloring to begin. It normally comes in red, blue, green, and yellow. The Liqua-Gel drops come in more colors, but are quite difficult to work with because they are thicker.
- The distance from the dropper to the surface is a factor in the size of the splash. It was about 18 inches in my setup.
- High speed photography requires low flash power. Low flash power gives fast flash duration, which is what you want (think of a fast flash duration, when applied to high-speed photography, as somewhat analogous to a fast shutter speed). Try 1/16 flash power to start. If you need more light, try 1/8. Powers of anything more than that will usually be too high.
- Because you are using low flash power, you are minimizing the actual amount of light produced, so therefore need the flash units to be close to the splash.
- You want the splash to be illuminated only by the flash, not from any ambient light. I did this in the basement and at night.
- If you are not getting enough light at 1/16 flash power, it could be because of the previous 2 bullets, and could also be because the batteries in the flash are drained too much.
- I tried an aperture of f/16 at the beginning, and it didn't give me enough depth of field. f/22 was better, but I also moved the camera back a little from my minimum focus distance to give me a little more DOF.
- Shutter speed is the Max Sync Speed, which you can set in your flash menu settings in your camera. Note in the EXIF for this photo, that the shutter speed is 1/250. That was the Max Sync Speed for this camera (the number varies by camera). Understanding why a shutter speed this slow gives you the results needed for high-speed photography is very complex, and took me a long time to understand it.
This was supposed to be my winter photo project, but I was too anxious to wait. This was my third day working on this, and the photos got better each day. It's fun, so I'll keep at it for a while and will put up other photos later (note: I have added additional photos right before this one in my Photostream).
Splash!
This is a photo of a drop of milk (actually half & half) splashing into food coloring. It took a while to figure out how to do splash photos, so thought I would share how it was done.
The photo was taken in total darkness (basement), with light from 2 Speedlite flashes fired remotely about 6-8 inches from the drops. Flash setting was using Manual mode at 1/16 power.
The surface is a piece of glass that I painted black and placed on a table. Black foam board sheets were placed on the back and sides of the work area. The milk drops were released from an eyedropper mounted above the black glass.
Use manual focus, so first you need to get a good focus. I did this by releasing a single drop from the eye dropper, then placed a flat head screw at the front of the drop, and used that to get my focus. Once you get the focus right, you shouldn't have to do this step again unless you move something.
Carefully add a couple other milk drops to the one that has splashed (use a different eye dropper, not the one that is mounted). Add a drop or two of food color. Now comes the hard part. With one hand, release one drop from the eye dropper, and with the other hand, release the shutter using a remote. At first I was able to capture a successful splash only about one out of 50 shots, but now I can do it about one out of 3. At the beginning, it's sometimes difficult to determine whether you are pressing the remote button too soon or too late.
You have to clean up the drops occasionally, as they get muddled. Re-apply a few drops of fresh milk and food color.
Sometimes the splashes are more crown shaped than the one shown above. Other times they are entirely small droplets. All make interesting photos.
A few hints:
- You need enough light to see the drop that you are releasing from the dropper. Since it was totally dark, I used one of those red light flashlights attached to an extra tripod. The red light was aimed directly at the dropper, trying to minimize the light falling at the splash surface. If you don't have one of those lights, they are also helpful when doing night photography. White light may give you too much ambient light.
- As mentioned, I used half & half (half milk and half cream). Skim milk is too thin. I didn't try whole milk, but that may be too thin as well. I got good results with the half & half, so did not try whole cream. That may be too thick.
- Try different food color drops. If using multiple colors together, you may want to try it without placing the drops on top of each other. Try the standard liquid food coloring to begin. It normally comes in red, blue, green, and yellow. The Liqua-Gel drops come in more colors, but are quite difficult to work with because they are thicker.
- The distance from the dropper to the surface is a factor in the size of the splash. It was about 18 inches in my setup.
- High speed photography requires low flash power. Low flash power gives fast flash duration, which is what you want (think of a fast flash duration, when applied to high-speed photography, as somewhat analogous to a fast shutter speed). Try 1/16 flash power to start. If you need more light, try 1/8. Powers of anything more than that will usually be too high.
- Because you are using low flash power, you are minimizing the actual amount of light produced, so therefore need the flash units to be close to the splash.
- You want the splash to be illuminated only by the flash, not from any ambient light. I did this in the basement and at night.
- If you are not getting enough light at 1/16 flash power, it could be because of the previous 2 bullets, and could also be because the batteries in the flash are drained too much.
- I tried an aperture of f/16 at the beginning, and it didn't give me enough depth of field. f/22 was better, but I also moved the camera back a little from my minimum focus distance to give me a little more DOF.
- Shutter speed is the Max Sync Speed, which you can set in your flash menu settings in your camera. Note in the EXIF for this photo, that the shutter speed is 1/250. That was the Max Sync Speed for this camera (the number varies by camera). Understanding why a shutter speed this slow gives you the results needed for high-speed photography is very complex, and took me a long time to understand it.
This was supposed to be my winter photo project, but I was too anxious to wait. This was my third day working on this, and the photos got better each day. It's fun, so I'll keep at it for a while and will put up other photos later (note: I have added additional photos right before this one in my Photostream).