Water Droplets
I’ve been dabbling with Water droplet photography for a while now so this information is based purely on what I’ve discovered works for me. It also assumes you are using a dSLR with free standing flashguns.
It is possible to take reasonable images using cameras with in-built flashguns but they are very restrictive and, with very few exceptions, will only produce photographs of average quality.
Please don’t blame me for this limitation, it is just a fact of life 
The current setup for most of my water droplet images is shown below. Details of the setup can been on the notes added to this Flickr Image
These are the solenoid valves which control the droplets with the StopShot IR sensor underneath them
There are several ways of shooting water droplets but they generally fall into three methods:
1. In a totally dark room using the ‘bulb’ setting on the camera. The flash guns are then fired independently from the camera when the droplet is hopefully in the right place.
or
2. In a room with subdued lighting you can trigger the camera which fires the flashguns. The camera shutter should be set to the fastest speed that it will still synchronise to the flash guns, this is typically 1/200 – 1/250 second. I tend to use this method unless I am shooting extremely high speed images where the mechanical delays in the camera would mean missing the photograph.
or
3. Use a fast shutter speed with the lens aperture wide open and the iso rating cranked up. With a few exceptions photographs taken this way will be crap. Add some some very high powered lamps, say 500w or more, and reasonable images can be achieved and you will stay warm on a cold winters evening.
It is important to understand that in methods 1 and 2 it is NOT the camera shutter speed that is freezing the droplet movement it is the flash duration that does the work. In a completely dark room the shutter could be left open for minutes and a frozen image will still be taken if you are using flash.
The rest of this tutorial goes through the method shown in 2 above but the information applies to most techniques.
Equipment
The Canon 1D MkIIN, 7D or 40D cameras which I use are always tripod mounted to give me the maximum sharpness. To avoid cropping the image I also use a 100mm or 150mm macro lens which is focussed manually.
The camera should be set to use the ‘mirror lockup’, if possible, for two reasons:
a. The mechanical delay of the mirror flipping up and then shutter firing is typically around 100 milliseconds so I lock the mirror up before each shot to reduce the delay down to around 40-50 milliseconds. Some, but not all, dSLR cameras have this feature.
b. Using mirror lockup removes almost all of the internal camera vibration and maximises the image sharpness, so use it if you can. Mirror lockup is recommended for a lot of photography styles including landscape/waterscape and nature photography.
I also use a cable release either manually or electronically fired. Used manually you are relying on practise and luck to get the timing right, using electronics to trigger the camera removes a lot of the uncertainities.
The camera is in manual exposure mode typically 1/250 second* at f16-22 iso 100. I could stop the lens down further to increase the DoF BUT the images with the aperture fully closed to f32 are softer than at f16-22 due to diffraction limitations of the lens. This is common to all lens and using the smallest aperture for photography to get the maximum depth of field is not normally recommended.
On the camera hotshoe is a wireless transmitter that triggers the flashguns I use, normally Canon 580Ex II guns and a 550Ex gun. You can use a wired flash system if you like, I use wireless to reduce the number of cables running around but for very high speed work I will use wired flashguns to remove the delays in the wirless system. (*see final note)
The flash guns are set to manual control and typically run at 1/64-1/128 of full power to minimise the flash duration. If the flash guns are set to use full power the duration of the flash is around 1 millisecond (1/1000 second) this long flash duration will cause motion blur and degrade the final image, this is one reason why in-built flashes are a poor choice. Set to 1/128 of full power the 580Ex flashgun produces a flash that is only 1/30,000 of a second duration, that’s 30 times shorter than the gun on full power! Please check out this page to see the effects of flash power and motion blur
To use the flash guns on 1/128 power AND still be able to take the photograph at f16 iso 100 the guns need to be very very close to the droplet or you need to use a lot of flash guns. My guns are covered in clingfilm to keep them dry because they are only 100-150mm away from the splash. Remember the guns have to be very close or you will end up using a wide aperture (small DoF) or a very large iso setting (more noise).
I use small lumiquest softboxes or stofen diffusers on the flash guns to soften the shadows they produce or if I want dramatic lighting some simple rolled up tubes of paper to make the flash very directional.
Other Equipment
A small eye dropper or drinking straw can be used to produce the droplets, you can even use electronically timed solenoid valves to improve your success rate.
Food colouring is a simple way to dye the water to produce colourful photographs.
Coloured card or acrylic for background colour
Electronic timing and trigger systems are available that remove a lot of the difficulties of getting good water droplet images. I use infrared trigger beams that control the water solenoid valves and the camera and flash guns. Good timing systems, imo, are available from B Mumford – The Mumford Time Machine and Cognisys – StopShot. My current system is using three Stopshot modules.
The electronic control I have allows me to get the timing very repeatable once I find a droplet shape I like. Once I have the timing set correctly I can concentrate on the lighting arrangement and keep repeating the shot until I’m happy with the result.
Plenty of patience and imagination.
I’m getting a hit rate of about 80% so if I take about 50 images, 40 of them will be reasonable photographs, 1 or 2 of them I will keep.
A Few Notes
The flash duration is around 1/20,000-1/30,000 of a second, if you dial the power down, and it is this flash duration that freezes the movement of the droplet NOT the shutter speed of the camera.
The ambient light of the room can cause motion blur on the droplets so subdued lighting or no lighting is recommended.
A low iso setting is also used to minimise noise and to reduce the effects of the ambient light.
A small aperture of f16-f22 will give you a reasonable depth of field.
Rather than colour the water you are dropping into use colourful backgrounds and photograph the colourful reflection of the background.
This type of photography can be achieved using normal high powered studio lights but it does need to be very high powered as you are reliant on the camera shutter speed to freeze the droplet movement rather than the flash duration.
If you have any questions/thoughts just shout and I’ll try my best to answer them.
* since purchasing the Cognisys stopshot system I am controlling the camera and flashguns separately and currently use a longer shutter speed of 1/10 second and use the Stopshot module to synchronise the flashguns to the opening of the shutter
Kev,
I purchased the stopshot and have set up a pvc frame for shooting water droplets. I was wondering however, how you get the color reflections on your shots (two colors). I was thinking about bouncing the main flash off of a blue foam core board (rear of droplet) and bouncing the second flash off of an overhead yellow foam core board (overhead 45 deg rear of droplet). Do you think this would work??? How do you get such good coloration in your shots???
Hi,
I use high reflective gloss acrylic sheets and fire the flashguns directly at them so you see the reflection of the board in the water and droplet. Using your technique should work as the reflected colour will appear on the differing angles of the water droplet and ripples. To maximise the colour saturation I tend to underexpose very slightly, typical -1/2 stop. Another option is to use frosted plastic and fire the flashguns through the plastic, this way you can add simple colour filters to get the colours you want
Hi Kev,
Thanks for the tutorial, I’ve found it it very useful indeed. I’ve just started out in photography, and have been wanting to try the water droplet shots for some time. I have a set-up issue that you may or may not be able to help me with, but i thought it was worth a try asking.
I’ve got a canon 500D, and I’m running 2 jessops 360 AFD flashguns, one wired up to the camera, the 2nd set to a slave. I’ve managed to get a number of sucessful shots, well, in terms of lighting and they’re nice and sharp, as I’m using your method, but I’m still trying to get the perfect crown.
The problem I’m having is with the flashguns firing, they work for a series of 5 or 6 shots, then stop working, I might get the odd shot firing here or there, but I’m not getting any consistency with the flashguns working. I’ve been checking that there charged ready each time, that the camera is recognising them, that ones a slave and they work if i press the test button every time. So its something I’m missing, its all seems like it should work, but for some reason my set-ups very hit and miss. Can you think of anything off the top of your head that might be causing such issues? I’m sicking to the same manual settings each time, same lighting conditions, strange one.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Kind Regards
DJ
I’ve switched to a wired system because of the delays I was getting with wireless systems. It maybe possible that your flashguns are going into ’sleep’ mode?
@thomas moore
I use the 24vDC 1/4″ BSP shown here http://www.solenoid-valves.com/Page1.htm
@photosbykev
Would you have a part number or a link to such a relay?
Hi Kev,
What kind of 5v solid state relay are you using to control the drops?
before I switched to the Stopshot system I used a small 5v 50ma relay which was controlled by the digital output pin on the arduino system. The switching side of the relay was rated at 50v 2A so it easily handled the power required to drive the solenoids.
Hi Kelvin! I`m very amazed with your works. I`m ordering my first setup for water drop shots from the Cognisys.com – the Stop Shot. However, I`m a bit confused which kind of solenoid valve should I use. My questions are as follows:
1) Should I give attention to the valve`s open/close response time? If I should, then what is the minimum? let`s say if I wanted to have water drop collisions on the air etc.
2) The website offers it`s own electronic solenoid valve and can be connected to and controlled by the StopShot, but the one that you`re using is different. In addition, what is Arduino computer. How do you control the valve timing with it? Where can I get it?
3)Could you explain why you`re using 3 StopShot modules? Is one module insufficient to get similar results?
Thanks in advance !!!
Hi,
before I purchased the Cognisys Stopshot system I was using my own solenoid valves controlled by a small arduino microprocessor to give me the timing I needed and the camera and flash units were controlled by a Mumford Time Machine, which is similar to, but less flexible than the Stopshot unit. The typical pulse length I give to the solenoids is 10-20ms so they need to be fairly responsive, they also need to operate with a low pressure limit of zero or slightly vaccuum, most valves require some pressure on the input to function correctly. Cognisys sell their own solenoid and marioette syphon and I would seriously recommend you consider their units purely because they have pre-programmed their Stopshots with the timing needed to produce droplets almost straight out of the box.
I have purchased three Stopshot modules purely because I want ot use more than one solenoid and I can link the modules together to give me a lot of timing circuits, I also use them for wildlife photography with the cross beam system Cognisys sell. One stopshot module and IR trigger etc is all you need to capture the water collision images
regards
Kev
sorry i forgot to ask where did you get the valves and trigger system ?
@Ammar
your photography are amazing
i never imagined of seeing such photos
you made me interested in this kind of photography
i have some questions that i’d like you to answer if you don’t mind:
- can i use the 430EX II instead of the 580EX II ?
- how much did the two valves and the trigger system cost you ?
by the way, i’m using a canon 450d with a 100mm macro lens .
pardon my English if there is any mistakes
thank you
You can use a 430Ex but it very low on power in comparison to the 580Ex and you do need to use the flashgun on the lowest power setting to minimise the flash duration. To get the light output you will have to put the flashgun very very close to the droplet. The valves are from a company called Connexion Development and are £30/each. The trigger can cost you anything from a few pounds if you wire one up yourself, there are plenty of circuit diagrams on the net, or in excess of 500 pounds if you want to spend that much.
Your shots are very impressive but I must admit to having less success myself…I don’t have an off camera flash so I’ve been relying on the internal flash and some daylight bulbs from my light tent and the results are not too sharp (as you predicted!).
One thing I was wondering is how you achieve the droplet shapes; do you use deep water? Some of your shots are side on with amazing reflections, is that simply from a very full bowl or are you shooting through glass?
Thanks
Nicky
The baking trays I normally used are about 5cm deep and I’m dropping the water from about 60cm into the tray with about 3-4cm of water in it. The very low angle shots are shot through the glass of a small ‘fish’ tank I put together.
regards
Kev
Hi Kev,
This is all so helpful – thanks very much for getting back to me so fast – really appreciate it. I’m going to copy all this and keep it in the computer so that I can have it to hand as a reference. Your explanation is so much clearer than anything else I’ve come across! I’ll start looking into getting some new equipment and a better set-up in the near future,
Best wishes,
Jane
Thanks for this excellent information! Just two questions: firstly, how do you stop getting the camera soaked – do you wrap most of it in clingfilm apart from the lens? (Does it matter if you get water and food dye on the lens?)
Second, what two flashguns do you suggest I buy – I can’t attach them to the camera because it won’t synchronise fast enough. I’ve been using an old handheld flash up till now, just using the ‘test’ flash on lowest power, but I need two, synchronised with each other, that I can control as a single unit when the camera is open on Bulb in a dark room. I can’t seem to find what I want just surfing the net.
Best wishes, Jane
Hi Jane,
I use clingfilm where I can
typically over the flashguns. If I think the lens is too close and might get splashed I put a UV filter onto the lens. I can clean up the filter off the camera, that way the main lens objective doesn’t get wet at all.
I use Canon equipment so I use Canon 580Ex flashguns for all of my work. The flashguns are triggered via cables to the Stopshot control unit I have. The control unit also synchronises the camera shutter so that it only remains open long enough for the flash guns to fire and capture the image. Most of the time I shoot around 1/10 second which mean I can have some subdued lighting rather than blacking out the room. To fire both flashes together it is simply a matter of wiring them up in parallel to a pushbutton, if they don’t have the facility to trigger them using a wire you can purchase some small hotshoe adaptors which will give you the facility.
You need to be looking for powerful flashguns, say a minimum guide number (GN) of 40+ with manual control of the power output, the 580Ex guns are normally used at 1/64 or 1/128 of full power to minimise the duration of the flash and are placed about 100mm from the splashes.
just shout if you need anything else
regards
Kev
@Cemal Ekin
The location was Lara Beach, Antalaya
Could you provide more information on the electronics you use to control the flash? Did you build something yourself or did you purchase something? Is the equipment difficult to use? Costly?
Great stuff!!
My typical studio setup is in my kitchen, this link provides an overview with an additional link to the techniques used http://www.flickr.com/photos/23362014@N06/3981021190/in/set-72157622430455740/
I stumbled on to your site from Alex Rabe’s NextGEN Gallery page. Not only did I find your work delightful and very interesting, the information you provide is also highly useful. The best surprise was to find out that you were in Turkey in 2009, so was I, visiting family and friends. Where in Turkey did you take those photographs showing a building that looks like St. Basil’s Cathedral?
I will come back and explore more. Thanks. — Cemal
A very intersting subject. Having experimented with firing flash by sound and vision (balloon bursting, dropping coins in water )