Water drop photography makes me feel happy and ecstatic. Small diamond like shiny water drops bouncing off a surface is something really inspiring and spellbinding. The main principle behind capturing water drops is to freeze their rapid motion with such an arrangement and precision that the camera does not induce any sort of motion blur. Quite obviously to do so, the exposure time has to be many fractions of a second. The second most important worth noting point is that we have to capture the reflection of the light produced by the water drop so the use appropriate light exposure arrangements has to be considered.
When it comes to point-and-shoot cameras it becomes all the more difficult to maintain all above standards to photograph water drops. But again it’s not impossible ! I will explain you how…
Water drop photography with a compact camera
Requirements :
-
an ordinary point and shoot camera
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a plastic tray partially filled with water (prefer not to use white one)
- water drop source (use a water filled polythene bag clamped to a suitable height above the tray)
Setting the camera to capture water drops :
Ok. Now prick the polythene bag so that water drops fall regularly into the partially filled tray. Now is the time to set the camera. Set the camera to manual mode – choose an ISO the lowest available on your camera, set the exposure to a point level and turn on the flash. The lowest ISO will ensure that the water drop is highly focused while the flash will help in capturing the reflection produced by the water drops. If the burst mode (multi-shot mode) is available on the camera settings then turn it on. This feature will help in not missing any drop to water interaction.
Now take your camera closer to the falling drops (not too close) and hold it firmly since it will be likely to induce motion blur on account of low ISO if your hands shake. If possible, use a tripod instead. Now take a series of shots and experiment with different positions.
Some of the water drop shots I took with my point and shoot camera – Sony W320
I hope that you all have must enjoyed reading this post on water drop photography. For any query or feedback feel free to comment below.