STEP BY STEP

Drip feed your Nikon

1 Get set up

You’ll need a bowl or dish to hold the water and a pipette – or ‘eyedropper’ – to squeeze water out, a drop at a time. The height that you hold your pipette will determine the shape and size of your water drop, so experiment with different elevations and see what you prefer.

2 Add some flash

The key to good water drop photography is to place a flash either side of the bowl, firing across the end of your lens (so it’s wise to use a lens hood to prevent flare from spoiling your shot). This gives shape and form to your splash, making it seem like a sculpture in your final shot.

3 Angle your camera

Mount your Nikon to a tripod and line it up with the dish of water so that you have a slight downwards angle across the surface of the water. This angle helps to eliminate the edge of the bowl in the background, which would otherwise be a distraction.

4 Lock the focus

Zoom in until your entire frame is filled with water. Place the pipette in the centre of the bowl and using autofocus to focus on the pipette until it’s sharp. Then slide the AF switch to the manual focus position to avoid the camera attempting to focus each time you take a shot.

5 Set the exposure

We used a close-up filter to focus closely on the drop (see page 88 for more on these). In manual mode we set an aperture of f/16 for increased depth of field, a 1/200 sec shutter speed to match the flash sync speed and ISO100 to minimize noise.

6 Time it right

Using a remote shutter release gives you the ability to be further away from your Nikon camera body. This is helpful if you’re shooting by yourself, so you can trigger the shutter at the precise moment that you simultaneously release the water drop.