3rd round of water drops

[BluewookieJim]

Did my first tethered shooting last night. Shooting tethered allowed me to nail my focus and drastically increase the number of successful captures.

Here is my setup:
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3636/3433726756_37c5946b25_b.jpg (http://www.flickr.com/photos/kodanja/3433726756/)


Here are a few of the results:

http://photos.kodanja.net/img/v7/p29115271-4.jpg

http://photos.kodanja.net/img/v8/p154061185-4.jpg

http://photos.kodanja.net/img/v7/p388037274-4.jpg


http://photos.kodanja.net/img/v8/p487862092-4.jpg

http://photos.kodanja.net/img/v7/p434105897-4.jpg

Shooting setup was 20D + Canon 100mm Macro F/2.8, wired shutter release, Canon 580exII, off camera left, approx 75 degrees. Cactus v4 wireless flash triggers. Various gift bags as the backgrounds, regular drinking glass wrapped with light purple IKEA wrapping paper.

The rest of the gallery can be seen here: http://photos.kodanja.net/drops3

[dpds68]

Oh very well done .

[dadecountyanthony]

Well done. The set up looks simple but with big results.

Thanks for sharing.

[Grimes]

Great! The lighting turned out very well!

[g3org3y]

Really love those! :)

[BluewookieJim]

Thanks everyone. Shooting tethered made a huge difference from my previous attempts.

I've got a semi-fancy faucet, so I was having a hard time getting consistently well focused shots before. I was trying 2 different approaches, focusing on a steady stream, which worked well, but then drips were not quite in the same focus plane. I also had tried focusing on the front rim of the glass, then the back rim, and finally splitting the difference.

As much as I love my 20D, trying to use the micro LCD to check my focus was not working out well, so I decided to try shooting tethered for the first time ever. It took me longer to find and install the canon utilities than it did to get the setup. As for setting the focus on the drops, it took maybe 3 or 4 shots to tweak the focus to the results shown above, and then I was good to shoot. That left the timing as the only challenge. I took about half the shots with all the lights in the room off, just listening for the drip and manually tripping the shutter release.

Next time I want to try limiting the light some more with some home-made gobos.

[Phil.hearing]

v impressive :) bw!

[whitetrash]

awesome shots!

thanks for shaing your setup, i love seing the behind the scenes stuff.

[jgrussell]

Very nicely done!

[BluewookieJim]

v impressive :) bw!

Thanks, your much too kind.

awesome shots!

thanks for shaing your setup, i love seing the behind the scenes stuff.

No prob, I love seeing that kind of stuff too. The point and shoot (Canon 880IS) I bought my wife for Christmas comes in real handy for the setup shots.

[triniechu]

woahhh! so cool! these came out great!

[Quarantine]

very nice shots

[ahhhlawn]

wow, great shots!

[kosin]

nice results...

personally I don't like the black background with the cats...

[woodsj6]

Very nice, I'll have to try the faucet method next time. My only problem was getting a steady flow in the same plane.

[PlayersZ28]

great shots! thanks for showing the setup.

[Matt Peters]

Brilliant results!!

[Scooby Ju]

great shots. it has inspired me to try and do some.

[BluewookieJim]

nice results...

personally I don't like the black background with the cats...

No prob. I basically used all the unique looking gift-bags I could find around the house. As for the cats, well, my wife likes cats, and I had all this gear setup in the kitchen, well, you get the point....

Very nice, I'll have to try the faucet method next time. My only problem was getting a steady flow in the same plane.

I've had that problem. On my faucet, a thin steady stream is actually in a completely different focal plane than a steady drip, go figure. I can nail the focus in camera on the steady stream, but need other methods (ie shooting tethered, or trial and error) to nail it on the steady drips.

I just noticed that I didn't post any samples with this background, enjoy.

http://photos.kodanja.net/img/v8/p487958694-4.jpg

For this background, I wasn't thrilled with the colors, so in post I changed the WB to shade setting to suit my personal vision?

And again, thanks for all the comments.

[imposter]

very nice pictures indeed. and thanks for sharing the setup.

[AlphaChicken]

Very nice! I am another that is happy you posted a pic of the setup. I am _DIGgin_ the background setup haha.

[EveryMilesAMemory]

awesome shots!

thanks for shaing your setup, i love seing the behind the scenes stuff.

Me too!! Thanks for sharing all your learning info!

[sacral]

Don't cook your laptop!

Great work...inspired to try this now! :) Except no macro lens... :(

[pixelchix]

Dumb question, what does it mean shooting tethered. Great shots by the way!

[CamDiver]

Great stuff. I am also very much into the water drop scene, if there is such a thing, and have just bought the IR sensor and flash triggers to look at nailing collision shots. The gear should be here in four days!!

Will share results,
Cheers and great job again,
Mark.

[BluewookieJim]

Dumb question, what does it mean shooting tethered. Great shots by the way!

Shooting tethered is when you have your camera hooked up via USB cable to your computer, and have the Canon EOS Capture software running (you are using canon?). From there you can set up Lightroom or your preferred app to import photos automatically from a watched folder.

For me, this makes it much easier to nail the focus on the drops. My viewfinder on the 20D is about the size of a nickel, so that doesn't work. And I havent taken the time to build a proper contraption for doing these kind of shots, so it's straight from my angled faucet into a usually a drinking glass.

Great stuff. I am also very much into the water drop scene, if there is such a thing, and have just bought the IR sensor and flash triggers to look at nailing collision shots. The gear should be here in four days!!

Will share results,
Cheers and great job again,
Mark.

Thanks. The sensors should make it a lot easier. I work out the timing when I'm doing them, so there is a good amount of hit-or-miss.

[Winter Ivy]

Those are really cool, I love the background & reflections especially in the last two.

-Diana

[Hinson]

Great shots but for me the background takes attention away from the water droplets. I would much rather have preferred a solid background.

[illMATICS]

wow! love the colors

[Violator]

Great shots but for me the background takes attention away from the water droplets. I would much rather have preferred a solid background.
I DO like the photos, but I also agree with Hinson....possibly a different angle - so you do not have all of the additional colors on the background, but they will still show up in the water drops.
Thank you for sharing these.