Liquid "Art" ?

[DarkHorse]

OK, so we shoot with what we have,,right?

ive got a Canon 100mm 2.8 Macro,
50D
and napkins for a soft-tent,
white bowl,
packing wrap shoved in my "on-board-flash"
and for some reason cant get above 250 on the shutter,,,grrrrr,,,
in manual mode,
,
but
,
after 4 hrs of shooting, water dripping in the sink,,drip, drip, change,,drip,
i did like these,

comments are very much wanted and welcome
im here to learn,
,
info should be attached,
,
i NEED A REAL FLASH BAD,,,

johnp

[Kenj8246]

John, try googling 'flash sync speed'. Sounds like the 50D has a max sync speed of 1/250. It will probably allow what's called high speed flash sync but IMO, it's not gonna help you much here.

These shots look pretty darned nice to be shot just eyeballing it. IMO, to do any better, you'd need to invest in some additional electronics to time the drops.

[dlanter]

Not bad at all John. Without a photo-gate type of trigger of some sorts it takes hundreds of shots to get the timing right for a few keepers. Like Kenny said, the camera shutter speed isn't going to improve this kind of shot very much, keep it at 1/250. The main trick is the flash duration. In manual mode, a flash set at 1/16 power (or less) is much shorter than the duration when set at 1/4 or 1/2. I've never even fired my pop up flash so I'm not sure how to change the settings. A off camera flash or two is almost a necessity with this kind of shooting.

[J Eddington]

You can also using cheap clip lights from Ikea. Works great and you don't have to worry about flash! You can bounce the light off of white foam board.
IKEA | Lighting | Table lamps | TERTIAL | Work lamp

[J Eddington]

ops

[dlanter]

Originally Posted by J Eddington

You can also using cheap clip lights from Ikea. Works great and you don't have to worry about flash! You can bounce the light off of white foam board.

Using strong constant lights you would be limited to the fastest camera shutter speed which I believe is 1/8000. With a low power setting on a flash you can get flash durations in the neighborhood of 1/20,000 sec.

[DigitalScape]

Nice work, John - ditto to what the other have mentioned on flash. I do like results of the light diffusion you worked out.