Oil and Water

These photos are of olive oil drops in water.

The set up is not complicated. I used two bricks to hold a glass dish above the floor. The dish had a couple of centimeters of water in it, along with some olive oil.

 

My Canon 40D (fitted with a Tamron 90mm macro lens) was mounted on a tripod and aimed down at the waters surface. One 580 EX flash was used off camera in manual mode. The flash was triggered using an off camera flash cord. Mirror lock up and a remote release were also used.

The coloured blocks were placed under the bowl to provide the colour.

Once everything was in place, I put the camera in manual mode, set the shutter speed to 1/250th of a second and started with an aperture of f/4. I used live view to focus on the oil drops and took test shots and adjusted the flash power until I was happy with the exposure.

Then it was just a case of putting different coloured objects under the dish, looking for interesting oil drop patterns and taking the picture.

In future I will pay more attention to any dust or hairs that get in to the water. I ended up deleting quite a few pictures as a couple of small hairs had got into the water, and these were very visible in the photo.

Here are some more...

I also took a few pictures handheld at something like a 45 degree angle to the surface of the water. This gave a different look to the oil drops.

It was easy to spend a couple of hours taking these pictures. I like the effect from shooting at an angle to the water...I'll be having another go at this sometime soon!

Dave