The KSPD WebLog

I saw a program on The Discovery Channel recently about photographing water droplets using high speed video cameras.  I thought I’d give it a shot using a traditional digital SLR.  This setup is incredibly basic and went something like this:

Setup:
Baking pan for water
C-Stand with grip arm to hold zip-lock bag filled with water over baking pan
Tripod
Camera (In this case, a Nikon D3 with a Micro Nikkor 60mm AF lens)
PW’d AlienBees B800 with 10 degree honeycomb grid
Sample book of Roscolux gels. (The free book of small gells that you can get from lighting stores, has about 500 free gels in them)
Reflective material behind the baking pan to reflect light down onto the water.  I used anything from a water color painting made by a friend of mine to a white piece of poster board.

I shot in manual, about 1/250th sec @ f 16 with the strobe at full power pointing at the background material.   I had to shoot A LOT of frame (about 300) to get these few keepers.  Its a very inexact science.  Mostly trial and error.  In a perfect world, I would have liked to have shot at a faster shutter speed, but my D3 syncs at 1/250, so I was somewhat limited.  A fix for this would have been to use a SB-800 or SB-900 with high speed sync enabled, but I just didn’t get around to it.  Stopping down a little more would have also helped with some focus issues I was clearly experiencing.

Enjoy!