It all started after browsing through Strobist.com, and viewing David Hobby’s Strobist DVD’s. I wanted to try to photograph some bouncing water droplets.

Like with most things, the preparation and the cleaning up afterwards take more time than the actual shooting. I used a big black oven plate as a water basin. A big piece of cardboard had to serve as background. I preferred to have a white background, but I didn’t have any, but if you set your strobe’s power high enough, everything will become white.

I tight up a little zip-lock bag on the ceiling’s light and punched a hole in it. The hole however seemed to be to big. I got to many droplets at the same time. Also the bag was turning around, which made it hard to keep the focus right.

I placed my Canon 430EX II camera left on a piece of foam, pointed towards the background and triggered with a cheapo eBay wireless flash trigger.

Of all 360 pictures I managed to make in less then 10 minutes, the following were the nicest.
Water Droplet

Water Droplet

The setup:
LightingSetup

Two days later I found out a way to make a nice and easy Droplet generator, using only a Schell tap and an empty milk container.

Duppel Generator

With this own made droplet generator it’s a lot easier to make all the droplets fall on the exact same spot, and thus enable you to always focus right.

Check out the result:

Water Droplet 2

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.