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Wednesday, May 19, 2010

Freezing the water drop

After doing some research on the web, I found some reasonable explanation on the tactic to freeze the water drop. Here are lessons that I learnt and would like to share with my reader :)
1) Set the flash power to 1/128th. It is the duration of the flash that freeze the water. Not the shutter speed of the camera.
  • This magic number is evaluated by Photosbykev.
  • Theory is explained by MikeJ in DCChallenge as quoted here: "With a very short duration flash, you can leave the shutter open on Bulb in a dark room and take the shot and freeze the water, a arrow, a bullet or any thing else that is moving fast."
 2) Set an appropriate F-number. My picture was taken as F1/10. However, in my case, the depth of view is still too shallow. I will lower the aperture further in next trial.

3) Equipment besides the basic: For cheap alternative, I had
i. a plastic bag filled with milk
ii. a needle to create tiny hole(s) so that the milk will keep dripping. (The dripping will slow down. So, I will poke more holes along the process). 
iii. a tripod to fix the position of the camera where it shall focus.
iv. a cup to hold the milk
v. a background to highlight my water drop
vi. a Flash borrowed from my Friend :P

The setup is learnt from Flicr member
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Future improvement: a Time Machine for mushroom looking water drop which will also help in improving the hit rate.

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Now, I would like to share my humble output :)

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