Water Drop Photography Guide

Taking a Dip into Water Drop Photography

Ever since my first piece of water drop photography, I've been constantly bombarded by other photographers asking me how I have pulled it off. I have even had experienced photographers asking me tips on it. This has been quite a surprise to me as it has always been an easy thing for me. But being me I have tried to be as helpful as I could and help them start down the right path. Now I'm not complaining, it is nice having photographers a lot better then me asking me for tips, but I've said the same things hundreds of times now. So what better way to help them all out without having to become a broken record, then typing out a nice tutorial for everyone?
This tutorial is going to try and cover all the know how in drop photography I have, which is fairly extensive. Each section will deal with just one subject, so if it’s something you already know all about, or just don’t care to read, simply skip over it. As I only have one camera, I can’t exactly take pictures of me doing some drop photography, but I will try my best to work you through this.


What It Takes
This section is going to go over what can make drop shots so hard, and cover what it takes to capture these nice little photos.
First thing we need to talk about is shutter speed. This is the most important aspect of capture water drops in action. These drops aren’t moving slow, and the splashes they create and the cool effects of water deformation happen extremely fast. Drop photography is just more or less basic stop motion photography. As such, to capture the drops without any blur, you need to have the sensor exposed for as short of a time as you can pull off. This means a shutter speed of at least 1/200, but higher is always better. The faster shutter speed you can pull off the more likely you are to get a good picture.
But of course just setting your shutter to a high speed doesn’t give you the picture, if only it were that easy. Next you need to consider your aperture settings. While it would be easy to just set a wide aperture, to help get more light in due to the high shutter speed, your going to get a narrow depth of field, and this can ruin a drop shot if your camera isn’t perfectly lined up with the drop, even then some of the splash that looks so amazing might be out of the field of view. I have found an aperture of F20 is usually good to get the whole picture, but it’s going to differ for each camera and most point and shoots don’t have this good of aperture range.
Now if we have our shutter speed set high, and aperture narrow, then that means were going to need some VERY bright light. You can of course use your average high speed camera type setup, using brighter then the bloody sun lights surrounding the drop area. Or like me you can just use flash. I have found even direct sunlight doesn’t work as well as a simple flash. I don’t have anything other then the flash on my camera itself, and trust me it works just fine. The usual hard lines a flash gives to a photo that can ruin some photos, actually tends to aid give more definition to the drop and surrounding splash.

So in conclusion, we need a high shutter speed, one of at least 1/200, narrow aperture to capture all of the splash, and a flash. Next up, let’s see if your camera can do what we need it to do.


Can Your Equipment Hack It?
Next most important part, can your camera do what we need it to do? The basic answer is; more than likely. What were asking of your camera is not that big of a task, nor is it that hard of a shot once you learn what to set your camera at.
Just about all Digital SLR cameras can pull this off. From the low end to the high end, if it has SLR on it then more then likely it has enough manual settings to allow to tweak what you need and get just the right balance of shutter speed, aperture, and of course flash (as far as I know most, if not all DSLR cameras have built in flash, and if you have one that doesn’t you more then likely have an external flash).
As for you point and shooters out there, you have about a 50/50 chance of having a camera that can do what we want. Most of the P&S cameras out there have a setting that shoots at a high shutter speed, such as a sports photography or a motion photography setting. Some of the higher end ones even let you set your own shutter speed. As for aperture, well I have yet to see a P&S that has good aperture settings. This, as far as I know, is usually due to the built in, unchangeable lens, most P&S cameras have. But fear not, most can shoot with a decent focal range, at least good enough to capture the shot. As for flash, show me one P&S that doesn’t come with flash. Nuff’ said.

A few extras that are going to help in all of this, for either camera area, are of course a tripod, and a good place to do some drop shots. I admit just about all of mine have been done in my kitchen sink. It has running water, an awesome looking metal basin, and of course I don’t have to worry much about getting water splashed everywhere.
One more small piece of equipment I suggest, a good sized Ziploc bag of some kind. Scratching your head? Think hard for a second; where going to be splashing water about, and some of us will be doing this around a very expensive camera and possible very expensive flash/lens/tripod. A good plastic baggie can save the best and worst of cameras. As for how to use it, well I think that it deserves to go into the setup section, and guess what? That’s up next!


Getting Things Ready to Go
This could be one of the more important steps. I found a good setup can lead to an easy and fun shoot, and some very good drop shots. There is more to this then you might think, so I’m going to go over each different aspect one at a time.

First part of the setup is getting the area you’re going to do the drop ready. You need to accomplish this first because setting up the rest can clutter the area, and depending on the size of the area, it may make getting the drop itself setup a tad bit on the difficult side. I can’t heavily walk you through setting it up, you need to come up with your own shot ideas, but here are some hints.
For your first few shots, use your sink. If you pay attention to your faucet set on a low stream, you might notice the stream breaks as it goes, and becomes drops. If your sink has a decent looking basin you can simply capture the drops hitting the bottom of the sink. I have used it many a time to great results. If you don’t have a nice looking sink, then I suggest using a glass dish of some kind. Punch bowls or anything with a wide opening can work quite well. Once again I suggest using your sink to get the drop.
Another good first drop shot setup is using a paper cup with a whole cut in the bottom. You can jerry rig a stand of some kind to hold it above your drop spot of choice (sheet or cookie pans can work well, they usually have grease or oil residue giving the drop and the left over water an interesting effect) and have a steady source of water. Beyond basic streams of water, you can try for a single drop, one at a time. This is quite hard and I suggest against it at first. Unless you have amazing timing it can be almost impossible to get it the moment of impact or right after.

Next up we need to start thinking about camera position. As I’ve said unless you have some very bright lights, or shooting outside (even then I still recommend a flash for best outcome) then you’re going to be using flash. You need to take this into consideration when setting up your camera. If you’re just going to be holding it by hand, or just don’t have a tripod (shame on you) then skip this section.
For those of us setting up the camera with a tripod or anything that can hold a camera, we need to worry about the angle of the camera. Different angles can yield different views of the drop itself, and with the flash hitting the water at different angles you can get different levels of brightness and color, as well as shadows (for the most part shadows in drop shots done with straight hard flash to me don’t look great; try and keep the camera to where it doesn’t capture the shadows too well, unless you think it adds to the shot).
I tend to keep the camera close to the same level as the water, but slightly above and at a slight angle. I find this tends to give a good view of the water and the drops and at the same time looks good with the flash. Experimentation is best for this, and I suggest trying all the different angles.
If your just hand holding the camera, you still have to worry about angle, but try and experiment more. I also suggest if your camera has any sort of dynamic auto focus and can constantly change the focal point, use it. Unless you’re using a very wide aperture, you’re going to have to worry about hand movement screwing up the shot. That is unless your one of those ungodly people I dislike who can hold a camera almost perfectly steady.

Final setup for me is usually doing some testing. From testing your lighting, to just making sure you can get the drop captured with your camera, a bit of initial testing can save you headache down the road. I also find if using a tripod, that it’s a good idea to take a picture or two, then remove the camera from the tripod, download the images to your computer, and check them first. No LCD screen on a camera can really show you how the image looks, and if the shot still has too much blur in it. Other then that we are ready to begin.


Camera Settings
Before we start doing the shoot, let’s talk about camera settings. We went over some of them briefly in talking about whether or not your camera can handle this, but I think we should go a little more in depth to try and help you understand the settings, and not just know what to set things at.

Let’s start in the Point and Shoot department, as it is what I started with and I don’t doubt that a lot of people are using a nice P&S, instead of a high end SLR, or something with a lot of manual settings. Now this is going to be a very broad idea of settings for a P&S, I can’t get anymore specific without knowing your camera myself. For the most part the different modes are the same on each, and usually only the higher end P&S let you manually set anything other then white balance and maybe exposure compensation. Anyways, let’s start.
Most P&S cameras have different modes, or zones. Each of which is meant for a different type of photography. For example, most have a night shot mode, which usually turns on flash, or if it doesn’t (or you turn flash off yourself) it should lower the shutter speed to bring in more light (should being the operative term, as I said, everything is different on each different P&S). For water drop photography, either a manual mode (some have them, some don’t) or a sports photography mode tend to work best (Sports or action modes/zones tend to up the shutter speed, perfect for drop shots).
Now a fair word of warning; some P&S cameras don’t let you manually select ISO (ISO is the sensor in your cameras sensitivity to light), and in sports or action zones might increase this to compensate for low light during high speed photography. High ISO in digital cameras causes that grainy stuff on photos, called noise. The hotter then sensor gets the more noise and the higher the ISO, the hotter the sensor gets. So be careful when trying it out, make sure you can either edit ISO, or the mode your in doesn’t set it high.
Some models of P&S cameras have a few more manual settings. The one I used for years had options to set ISO, white balance, EV Compensation, Shutter speed, and I could step up or down the aperture. The more manual settings you have to work with, the easier this is. If you can set ISO, keep it at its lowest; the flash on your camera will give us all the light we need. If you can set the shutter speed, anything above 200 is perfect, but at least 150-200 is needed, even then some motion blurring will occur. Finally, the aperture; if you can set this you can both increase or decrease the amount of light coming in, as well as the DOF. A higher aperture is usually best, and depending on how much it will let you change it, I like around F15 or F20. I’m saving white balance for its own last chapter after we talk about full manual settings, since just about all cameras let you change it in some way, shape, or form.

Now we need to talk about cameras that have almost fully manual modes/zones, if not full manual. These are usually the high end P&S, and full body cameras, and of course, the Digital SLR range of cameras. If you have one of these, I sure hope you know a bit more about settings things manually, but if you don’t have no fear, Corey to the rescue.
As I’ve said, we need to have a high shutter speed, wide aperture, and flash. This should be easy in a full manual mode, which is what you should have if you’re reading this section. For shutter speed, I like anything in the range of 1/200 to 1/700. Anything above and beyond that is just overkill if you ask me. Anything above 1/150 can be used, but some blurring will occur. Above 1/200 and higher tends to keep a perfectly crisp clear picture. Aperture settings tend to change for me depending on what I want. For instance, ‘Into the Void’, my now most popular photograph, had a narrow aperture, f5.6, and had a very shallow focal range, and the end result was a slightly blurred drop at the top of the image. On the other hand, ‘Chaos in Motion’ had a fairly wide aperture, f20, and most of the shot is in perfect focus, even though the splash gets fairly high.  
As for flash, I tend to come across more and more people who want to avoid it, especially on camera flash. But as I’ve said, for this kind of photography, an on camera flash is just about perfect. I suggest not trying to diffuse it in any way, as that can result in less definition of the image, especially with full splashes. If you, on the other hand, have an off camera flash of any kind, or are using a constant light setup, be careful of your angles. A poorly positioned flash or light source relative to the camera can cause unwanted lighting effects, and shadowing. As for me personally, the only non built-in flash I would use, would be a hot shoe flash. Other then that it’s built-in for me only.
On these kinds of cameras, you might also need to worry about things like the color space you’re working in. For instance, my Canon Digital Rebel XTi has multiple color settings, from Standard, to Landscape, to portrait, and of course monochrome. For drop photography, I tend to stay in landscape; I find that it gives the best colors to the water. As with everything else I suggest experimentation.

Finally, we have white balance; this is something you should able to set for almost any camera out there, in some form or another. It might seem like a good idea to go for the flash setting most cameras have, but I found it doesn’t lend any good colors to the shot for the most part. I tend to stick in the lower range of color temperatures, as it gives a, for lack of a better word, bluer look to the shot. In our heads water is blue, and should look blue, therefore a bluer shot tends to work good.

I usually save most of the color and white balance settings for my computer. I shoot entirely in RAW format, and the program that comes with my camera, Digital Photo Professional, is quite nice at finalizing the colors and contrast of the picture. We will get into post-processing the shot in another section though.


Actually Taking the Picture
Ah, finally time to get down to actually shooting this bad boy. For the most part you should be ready to go on your own up until we hit post-processing. But of course, I don’t just want to drop you flat out on your face, I have taken the time to think of a few tips I have for ya.

First off, most important advice I can give you; take as many shots as your camera can handle. Simple as that. I don’t know how many times I’ve been so close to getting a shot just about perfect, only to find that one small part of it kills it for me. I find that shooting in bulk, tends to help. Now I don’t mean taking tons of different pictures of different angles and the like, just hoping to strike gold. I mean, if your camera has a burst fire mode, use it.
You never know when a slight shake of the camera (really shouldn’t be a problem here, just using it as an example) or slight change in the position of the sun could for some odd reason throw off the shot. Taking a few in rapid succession can aid in getting one that is just right. And in water drop photography, this method of shooting is very beneficial; even when you start getting really good at it; perfectly timing a drop is hard. With burst fire you can capture a stream that is breaking apart and get some amazing drops.

And that brings up my next tip; use streams instead of actual drops. I have already said this in this tutorial, but it needs repeating. A stream of water will usually break apart as it falls to earth, and as such a nice small stream from the right height can produce tons of drops at the same time. Granted, it doesn’t give as great an effect as a perfectly timed shot with the drop hitting still water, but I promise it doesn’t look bad either.
Also on the subject of how you handle water, try this out for size. Take a cup of water, and dump it into whatever you’re shooting. Now your going to need something to keep your camera from getting wet (DIY cover in the next tip), and it takes fairly good timing (not as hard as a single drop), but the stream of water from the cup makes an excellent shot as it displaces the water already where your drops are landing.

Finally, we have my DIY camera cover. Now I don’t know about you, but I don’t have the money to replace my camera should a good amount of water make its way to it while I’m splashing about. The design of this is simple, and should be from stuff most of us photographers should have lying about. First thing you will need is a Ziploc storage bag; these are usually in the gallon size range or so. This should fit easily over your camera with the flash up (if it has a pop-up flash). Finally we need a way to secure it to the camera, and something to go over the lens.
Most photographers with an SLR, and some P&S people, should have the right tool for the job sitting around; lens filter. A simple lens filter can act as a protective barrier for the lens (works better then a bag of course, since the filter is made to let the subject in view pass through). For those without one, or without a camera that can handle a filter, I find a small piece of thing PVC cut to size works well.
Now you have too options if you’re going the lens filter route. You can tape, glue, or otherwise permanently fasten the bag to the lens filter, giving you and easy to use, remove, and reuse cover. For those of us to broke to cannibalize a filter, you can do as I did; simply screw the filter on over the bag. Make sure of course, in either method, to make sure to cut out the plastic where the lens sees, so that way the image isn’t blurred or distorted.
For those going for PVC or some other method… well good luck on that. Your best bet is glue, but that doesn’t work as well and can leak. Duct tape works well too. Other then that, just try and be creative and get that thing attached.

Those should give you a good head start on getting the right shot. Just remember to take a lot of photos, and check them often, especially if your using a tripod and can easily take your camera to check it without losing the position your in. Oh and one more thing, keep paper towels handy…


The Edit
Now that you have that perfect shot, lets get it on to your computer and get it ready for the rest of the world to see (or at the people who might pay attention to you). I find its best not to try and edit these too much. Nothing major, just color, contrast, and levels editing. Beyond that you run the risk of the shot looking a little unreal, and maybe a bit faked.

For color editing, don’t be afraid to experiment. One of my favorite water drop shots has different ranges of colors through it, and looks amazing. Be careful not to over do it though; one color just a bit too bright and the shot begins to look fake once again. If your editing the file in a RAW format (which if you are using an SLR, I sure hope you are) then just mess with the white balance, and color range in whatever program you use to convert the RAW file.
If you do you’re editing in an image editor like Photoshop, or GIMP, then keep it to levels, color balance, and maybe some hue/saturation. Beyond that it’s just too much for your average water shot. I have seen some that look fairly decent manipulated a bit more, but you need to be careful with what you’re doing, I can’t stress that enough. Too many good drop shots have gone bad with the wrong edit.


End Stuff
I hope you are now ready to start taking some amazing water drop shots. I also hope that this little tutorial, or guide, whatever you want to call it, has helped you learn a bit more about this kind of shot. I promise, with a bit of luck it’s not that hard at all, if figured it out, so can you!!

And one final note; this thing was written over the course of a few days, and on top of that most of it was while I was half out of it. If you find anything out of place, a bit wrong, or any ranting/mumbling, then let me know.

Photography Is The
Emotion of Motion
Captured Forever…
Corey E.

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Written by Corey E. for the photographers at DeviantART.com and SheezyArt.com
If found anywhere else, please contact Corey at: hornsholdmyhalo@gmail.com
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