Tuesday, February 21, 2012

Photographing Water Drops on Window Pane

ISO 100, 50mm 1:1 macro lens with 2X macro extender, f/16 @ 1 sec., natural light.

Last fall I was experimenting with shooting close-ups of water condensation on window pane. Since I was using macro lens at 2:1 magnification ratio (double life-size image) I can safely consider this as micro photography. At this magnification it can be a problem to get sharp focus since depth-of-field is very shallow and the water drops are half of a sphere. I had to go all the way down to f/16 with aperture to get sharp images. Because of that, focusing rail is essential for really sharp image.
The photographs of water drops and set-up were done few months apart, as you can see. There is a snow on the ground on set-up pictures but looking through water drops on window pane there is very green grass .

In order to get close to window and water drops I had to place 2 legs of tripod on window sill and third leg on the floor.

Camera mounted on focusing rail.


Image flipped 180 °.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

test

Karli @ The Bonnie 5 said...

WOA! Never seen anything like this. Great idea! :-) The houses in the reflection are wonderful!