Its the Claw!

[milleker]

I've been getting more and more into drop shots again, but usually close to the end of the session I get bored and start playing around. This is one where I forcefully emptied the eyedropper of liquid out all at once. Originally brown liquid, photoshop made it green for me.

Technical info: 2 second exposure, f/22 at ISO100 on the 24-70mm 2.8 L in Macro mode at about 100mm (after the crop, 60mm before). Used a high speed shutter from HiViz and three Vivitar 283 flash units.

http://www.johnmilleker.com/content/photography/images/IMG_8501.jpg

[racketman]

nice one

[LordV]

Lovely liquid sculpture :)
Brian V.

[Ben Fried]

If you don't mind me asking, what kind of container or cup are you dropping the "drops" in to and what is the background? Also, how do you stop motion like that with a 2 second exposure?

Sorry for all the questions, I'm just very curious because I like the picture so much! :D

[milleker]

Thank you commenting Brian, Racketman and HSPN.

The container is a stainless steel slightly curved candle holder. Very cheap, must have lead in it since theres a big warning on the bottom "Do not use with food, may poison food". The background is just some white flexible foam sheets from the craft store.

Basically, the fastest a standard SLR camera can take a shot is 1/8000th of a second. The external flash can do much, much faster than that. So, I tell the camera to take a 1 or 2 second shot (quick enough for me to drop the liquid) so that the flash can expose the shot. Oh, I am doing this in a very dimly lit room.

While these can be done handheld, I'm using the Photogate kit from HiViz.com.

No problem with the questions, I love the opportunity to share whenever I can.

-John

[Cactuspic]

Wonderful shot John. The liquid almost looks it was glass.

Irwin

[Ben Fried]

Thanks for the info John!

[S Taylor]

Lovely shot!

Did you fire the flash manually then? (or is it set to 2nd curtain sync?? whatever you call it, I've not tried this setting yet)

Thanks for the setup info.

WT

[milleker]

Thanks Irwin and William!

William, the camera and flash don't even have the knowledge that each other exists. I set the camera to manual, f/22 and a shutter speed of 1 to 2 seconds. The shutter speed is just for me to do what I need to do quick enough to get the drop going and the flash firing. I do a test shot and then adjust the aperture and ISO of the shot. Shutter speed plays no role in this, it is open for two seconds but the flash is mere tens of thousandths of a second.

The flash fires with the help of the HiViz.com kit. My water drop passes through the detector, it triggers the high-speed trigger and then sends a signal to the flash. The trigger and camera are not connected. As far as the camera knows I'm severely underexposing my scene because it doesn't detect a flash at all.

[S Taylor]

Wow, what a cool setup. I'm off to their site to read a bit of their product material.

Thanks again,
WT

[justin carpenter]

great shot, well done.

[::Lisa::]

Wow that's awesome.

Kinda reminds me of those chairs like the hand chairs but different

[SezzySue]

Thank you commenting Brian, Racketman and HSPN.

The container is a stainless steel slightly curved candle holder. Very cheap, must have lead in it since theres a big warning on the bottom "Do not use with food, may poison food". The background is just some white flexible foam sheets from the craft store.

Basically, the fastest a standard SLR camera can take a shot is 1/8000th of a second. The external flash can do much, much faster than that. So, I tell the camera to take a 1 or 2 second shot (quick enough for me to drop the liquid) so that the flash can expose the shot. Oh, I am doing this in a very dimly lit room.

While these can be done handheld, I'm using the Photogate kit from HiViz.com.

No problem with the questions, I love the opportunity to share whenever I can.

-John
thanks thats very helpful

[Rafromak]

Very nice one!

[Beau Hudspeth]

Great shot - I love the P-Shopped colors!