Tag Archives: high speed

Paint Splash

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What better way to start the weekend than planning a photo shoot! This past Friday I left work and headed to do a bit of shopping in preparation for a mini project I’ve been wanting to do for some time now. The shopping list included a small bottle of red water-based paint, two glossy white ceramic tiles and an eye dropper. The idea was to photograph at high speed, a paint drop as it rebounds off the ground (or in this case one of the ceramic tiles).

The setup was fairly simple. I set the first tile flat on a coffee table, then placed the second tile perpendicular to it, essentially creating a mini studio. I then watered down my paint, squeezed some into my eyedropper, and then fixed the eyedropper vertically above the flat tile onto one of my tripods. I then fixed my speedlight flash near the eyedropper facing down, so that the light would rebound off the standing tile. Here is a photo taken with my cell phone of the entire setup (link).

With a towel standing by, I then started squeezing drop after drop, while triggering my camera with my wireless remote. It took a bit of luck and coordination, but boy was I happy when I managed to get this beautiful red crown!

Taken with my Canon 60D and Canon 100mm F2.8 macro lens, at ISO 200, F16, 1/200th of a sec. Flash set to manual at 1/16th of its power output.

Paint splash2 - 1920c

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Strawberry Plunge

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I had this itch over the last 3-4 days to try a new technique. One of my favourite professional photographers, to whom I owe most of my knowledge in photography, is Mark Wallace. In one of his recent Exploring Photography video tutorials, he demonstrated the technique of high-speed photography by using a very simple setup – a tripod-mounted camera and an off-camera flash. So I decided to give it a try and photograph a strawberry plunging in milk.

The technique itself was fairly trivial. Simply set the camera to manual mode with a long exposure (over a second) and a small aperture to get a decent depth of field. Turn all the lights off, trigger the camera, drop the strawberry and just as it hits the surface of the milk, trigger the flash. Needless to say it requires a lot of coordination and patience before you get a decent shot, especially when you are trying to do this all by yourself without someone helping you or any wireless triggers!

Shot with my Canon 60D and Canon 100mm F2.8 macro lens at ISO 100, F16 and a 4 second exposure. Flash was set to manual at 1/16th power.

Strawberry in Milk - 1920c