Water drops

Water drop #1
Water drop #2
Water drop #3
Water drop #4

I finally got around to scratching an itch and tried to photograph water drops. My setup was as follows:

  • set up the heavy-duty Manfrotto 3258 tripod with a Manfrotto 405 head on it
  • put the Canon 70-200mm f/2.8 lens + Canon Extender EF 1.4x + Canon Extension tube EF-25II
  • put a light stand next to the tripod with a Canon EX580II on manual flash. Set the zoom to 105mm, and the power to 1/16 + 0.7
  • attach Pocket Wizard Multimaxes to both flash and camera
  • attach Canon timer remote controller TC-80N3
  • set mirror lockup to enable:down with set
  • turn live view on to 10x mag
  • place a knife running across the dish where the water drop falls
  • mess with both the zoom and focus to get the writing on the knife into sharp focus
  • take picture — repeat ad infinitum (almost 200 pictures in total)

The extension tube both magnifies the picture and allows the lens to get much closer to the object in question. But the trade off for that is a razor thin depth of field. With an f-stop of 16, only millimeters were in focus.

Also, the timing of the shot is difficult. And I am limited to 320ms due to the high speed sync. Which makes one shot pictures like “coffee with a drop of milk” all the more impressive to view.