I thought I'd try stop-motion photography. Notably trying to catch a drop of water mid-fall. The 300mm zoom was put on a tripod four feet from the kitchen sink, a bright lamp for side light, and a black notebook as a backdrop. It was surprisingly difficult to get a slow drip-drip-drop from the faucet.

I can't find the website right now but there's a fellow who makes variable speed trigger boxes for this kind of work. You setup a sensor (to detect when the drop first starts falling, for example) and then some fraction of a second is counted off before the shutter is triggered. Fine tune the timing until you get the shot you want. Here's a similar triggering device.

Instead I held a remote shutter release and performed the microsecond timing in my head...uh, sort of. It was more like: "ok........now!" dang "ok....now!" no, "ok...now!"

It needs work. Once the photos were on the computer I found most of them to be blurry or boring. This shot caught my eye since it appears that the water is zipping up towards the faucet.

Here's my explanation: The main part of the shot happened as the shutter opened and flash fired. Everything, shadows included, is frozen and well defined. I think that the shutter remained open for some time after the flash's light dissipated. There was still enough side lighting from the lamp to render highlight trails as the droplet continued to fall.

• info
  • 6 comments
  • permanent link
  • email this