Macro Milkdrops

Helium_Junkie · 15 Jan 2007 at 10:15

Morning all! Hope you all had a nice weekend.

Yesterday the wife and I took a different approach to something I'd done before.
A while back, when I first got my Sigma 105mm macro, I set up the tripod in the bathroom, got some mad lighting, and took about 1500 pictures!
Of all those, I got this:

Which I was very proud of :-)

Yesterday I wanted to catch a splash instead of the drip.

We decided against water (we wanted some shadows to give more depth), and instead opted for a saucer of milk. To get a decent DoF and fast enough shutter to avoid blur we had to light the saucer with two desk lamps and a massive mofo torch. And it was still pretty dark

Anyway, here's some of the results. We had some very interestingly shaped splashes, which I'll post when the missus has finished going over them.

1. (My fave)

2.

3.

Thanks for looking, all C&C welcome :-)

SteveOBHave · 15 Jan 2007 at 10:19

I love it - the first (the drip) is stunning, and the first of the splash ones are very cool.

Wile E. Coyote · 15 Jan 2007 at 10:58

Very nice pics

, makes me want to get a macro lens even more, currently on have extension tubes

robertgilbert86 · 15 Jan 2007 at 11:17

Reminds me of something I've seen on deviant art, the guy uses water but with an interesting background texture here.

Nice try though, I'll do this once I've got some extension tubes

Helium_Junkie · 15 Jan 2007 at 11:45

robertgilbert86 said:
water but with an interesting background texture here.

Ooh, thats pretty funky stuff!

Sp00n · 15 Jan 2007 at 14:12

Is it just a case of setting up a "drip" then putting the camera on multi-capture and just hoping you get a good result or is it more scientific than that?

Helium_Junkie · 15 Jan 2007 at 14:57

Well you can try to time it, but good luck

I tried hitting the shutter as the drop detached from the dropper, seemed to get a splash half the time. Just setting up a medium speed drip and then snapping like mad seems the best way.
You'll get a fair whack of crap shots, but a few gooduns in there too

Sp00n · 15 Jan 2007 at 15:00

How do you initially set up the focus point for it, do you just do it around abouts where the droplet is going to hit in the sink or something similar?

Helium_Junkie · 15 Jan 2007 at 15:36

With my fingah!
Well, her finger actually. She held her finger roughly where the drips would hit (a little further back so I could focus on the edge of her finger). Then I used that clever button next to the lens which closes the aperture to see how the depth of field would look (handy that

).

Sp00n · 15 Jan 2007 at 15:51

Ooo... i've never pushed that button yet, will have a bash when i get home

johnathont01 · 15 Jan 2007 at 23:19

Nice shots. I would suggest using a flash though, it would save a lot of work setting up sufficient lighting. Also I think the white balance is a bit off on the milk shots, probably because of the incandescent lighting.

Alex53 · 16 Jan 2007 at 10:41

Interesting stuff. I did this myself a while ago and I can say its hard to take shots that stand out, and you do spend hours trying to get the setup right.

My only critique for the milk shots is they are a little underexposed (and WB is off as mentioned above). I feel they would gain if the milk looked clean and white.

Definitely suggest you try using flash, but from the side rather than on-camera.

I haven't tried milk, but this is what I managed with water and colouring. The lens was the canon 100mm macro, and the flash was a 430ex mounted on a second tripod beside the camera (and connected with the off-camera shoe cord). The sink was lined with foil paper and the drip was provided by the tap, which drips anyway unless closed quite tight

The colourings included squash, wine and food colouring, but once you do have a colour in there and if you shoot RAW you can play around with the hue quite a bit later.

Helium_Junkie · 16 Jan 2007 at 10:58

Funky stuff Alex, thanks for that!

My problem with flash was the sheer number of shots I had to take versus the time for the flash to 'prime'. The flash just cant keep up.
Lining a sink with foil?! I love that idea! I'll have to try some foil in my shots to see if it lights the area well enough.

As for white balance, I admit that is something I don't really understand well enough to use properly, I'll put it at the top of my "to learn about" list

Alex53 · 16 Jan 2007 at 11:10

If you shoot RAW and auto WB you will be fine, or almost fine, especially with flash. You can then can use the RAW converter to slide the bar to make what is white look white in the image, if needed.

To be honest once I got the hang of it, I could take just the one shot as the drop landed. I think what made it easier is that they came out of the tap at a constant rate rather than randomly, so you get into the rhythm of things

The foil, especially if you crumple it up a little first creates all sorts of cool reflections in the drop itself as the light from the flash bounces around. The other side of the coin is you have to make the DOF narrow enough so that the foil is out of focus enough, or otherwise you get obvious hot spots in the background, which are distracting.

Another good one is to make the side of the drop hit something like the tip of a pencil as if leaves the tap. It makes the drop rotate and change shape, which makes the shot more dynamic than just a drop landing straight and the water bouncing up vertically (see my first and third images above). It does make focusing harder though because the drop lands less predictably this way.

A fan blowing from the side was a waste of time in my case, so I wouldnt bother