An Experiment With Splash Photography

I got a request from one of the readers to write something about splash photography which I have never tried before. As soon as I got the request, I thought why not I try myself and share my experience with my readers. And today, I setup everything I can think of for splash photography and took several shots. Today's experiment gave me an idea of splash photography being more about precision, practice and patience. I shot five or six photos before splashing a cube of ice into a glass just to make sure that I have a good light condition. I have attached one of the photographs I took today. Let me explain what I did to get this shot. It is not a great shot but since it is my first time, I am happy with it.

Splash Photography

Equipment Setup

First I thought of putting three white cards around the glass to bounce the light. I tried that setup but it didn't give me a natural looking feeling. I wanted to do something natural and yet look exciting. Then I removed those cards and placed a glass on the table in a natural light environment and adjusted my exposure settings accordingly. I shot this picture in a Shutter priority mode because my main concern was to freeze the motion of water or liquid that will splash out when something is dropped into it. I tested different shutter speed and settled with 1/2500th of seconds. I used an external flash SB-600 to compensate the exposure with the high shutter speed. Keep in mind that you have to enable Auto FP feature in your DSLR camera to work with higher shutter speed than camera's sync speed. I used Nikon's wired shutter release cable and set my camera on a tripod to make it stable. I dropped a cube of ice myself and press the shutter release button with the other hand. Having two hands work together side by side confused me little bit for few shots. If possible, I recommend having an assistant to drop the ice on the water and you concentrate on getting a shot.

Taking a shot

When everything is setup, I dropped the ice from one hand and click the shutter button using other hand. I had already framed my shot and since everything is fixed, I don't have to see through the viewfinder to take my shot. That made my job little bit easy to synchronize the timing between dropping the ice on the glass and take a shot. I failed multiple times and finally got this shot which is something closer to what I like.

Summary

1. Setup your DSLR camera on a tripod.

2. I recommend shooting in a shutter priority mode and use the camera shutter speed fast enough to freeze the motion of splash. I used 1/2500th of sec.

3. Frame your photograph in advance and don’t bother to look through viewfinder while taking a shot.

4. Use wired or wireless shutter release button for a smooth operation.

5. Use White or gray card to balance the flash if you like and you may want to use one of the external flash unit to give enough light for handling faster shutter speed.

6. Count the dropping of your ice and click the button exactly when ice falls into ice. You may want to experiment little bit on timing to get a proper shot.

Like I already said, splash photography is more of practice, patience and precision between two actions. You will have to practice a lot to get a perfect shot. This is my first time and I didn't expect to get a great shot but what I got above is something to assure myself that I am going into the right direction.

Why Should We Use Longer Lens For Portrait Photography?

There are number of debates and confusions whether to use longer lens or shorter lens (also known as wide angle lens) to shoot portraits. After doing little bit of a research and reading few books, I have decided to write a blog about it. There are couple of factors to be considered while comparing a longer lens vs. a shorter lens for portrait photography. Let me explain them briefly and hope it will help you to find your answer as well.

1. Distortion

When you use a wide angle lens, you have to get closer to the subject to fill the frame. This closer distance to the subject creates distortion to the picture; things on the foreground look too big and things on the background look too small. If you are shooting people with shorter lens, you will get odd shape body of person like big flat face, long nose and other unstructured shape which you never think would come out as a result. Whereas if you use longer lens which requires farther distance to the subject minimize that distortion and things will have more realistic perspective. It also allows your portrait subject to sit comfortably as you maintain reasonable distance to the subject because of focal length.

2. Angle of view

Angle of view is simply how much you can see from view finder (or say how much you get inside frame) using different types of lenses. Wide angle lens or shorter lens will give you wide angle of view and hence you can see much more things on the background which can create cluttered images. But longer lens will give you narrow angle of view and you can see minimum of the background and foreground will be focused and almost entirely framed in the picture which helps to produce nice and clean shot.

3. Ease of use

Also if you are working with long zoom lens, you have another advantage to use it over fix length lens or shorter lens. It will allow you to shoot medium length shot to close head shot without moving front and back. You can use 50mm lens for general portraits but if you take closer headshot using this lens, you will end up getting little cartoonish character face than real face. We consider 85mm-135mm lenses ideal for portrait photography but you can also use 24-70mm f/2.8 or 70mm-200mm f/2.8 zoom lens but keep in mind their weight while using them for long time shooting.

Conclusion: Wide angle lens exaggerate things on your photographs. In fact wide angle lenses are not designed to use in portrait shot. They can be best use while shooting landscapes, interior where you want to capture much more things. Any lens between 85mm-135mm focal distance is considered the best lens for portrait photography which will keep your images clean, remove clutter from the images, keep nice distance with the subject, allow you to shoot multiple shot without moving front and back. And also creates nice shallow depth of field so that your foreground will be separated from the background producing pleasant image.

Dealing With The Digital Noise

Visual image noise is the random grainy effect on the photograph which is disturbing most of the time rather than pleasing. If these grainy dots, also known as a digital noise, are noticeable or objectionable in the photograph, it can ruin the beauty of the photograph by distracting the viewers mind from the subject. Digital noise is mainly caused by either high ISO settings or a long exposure shooting. Let's discuss these two main factors which contributes to the production of the digital noise.

1. High ISO Setting

High ISO noise commonly appears when you raise your camera’s sensitivity setting above ISO 400. Different camera’s sensitivity level with light differs from one another and sometimes it determines how good your camera is with the lights. With the Nikon D90, noise may become visible at ISO 800, and is often fairly noticeable at ISO 1600. And at ISO 3200, noise is usually quite bothersome. Nikon advises that using ISO 6400 in special situations like very low light condition may help you but you should consider labeling it H1.0. You can expect noise in any pictures taken with that ISO level which is obvious. High ISO noise appears as a result of the amplification needed to increase the sensitivity of the sensor. While using higher ISO settings do pull the details out of the dark areas, they also amplify non-signal information randomly, creating the noise. You’ll find a High ISO NR option in the Shooting menu, where you can specify High, Norm, or Low noise reduction, or turn the feature off entirely. Enabling the noise reduction tends to soften the grainy look, you may want to disable the feature if you‘re willing to accept a little noise to get more details in your picture.

2. Long Exposure Shooting

A similar noisy phenomenon occurs during the long time exposures, which allow more photons to reach the sensor, increasing your ability to capture a picture under low-light conditions. However, the longer exposures also increase the likelihood that some pixels will register random phantom photons, often because the longer an imager is, the warmer it gets, and that heat can be mistaken for photons. There’s also a special kind of noise that CMOS sensors (like the one used in the D90) are potentially susceptible to. With a CCD sensor, the entire signal is conveyed off the chip and funneled through a single amplifier and analog-to-digital conversion circuit. Any noise introduced there is, at least, consistent. CMOS imagers, on the other hand, contain millions of individual amplifiers and A/D converters, all working in unison. Because all these circuits don’t necessarily call process in precisely the same way all the time, they can introduce something called fixed-pattern noise in the image data.

Fortunately, Nikon has done an exceptional job minimizing those noises from all causes in the D90 and other Nikon DSLRs. Even so, you might still want to apply the optional Long Exposure Noise Reduction that can be activated using “Long exp. NR” in the Shooting menu, where the feature can be turned On or Off. When the Long exp NR feature is turned on, D90 takes a second blank exposure and compares the random pixels in that image with the photograph you just took (first image). Pixels that coincide in the two pictures represent the noise and can safely be suppressed. This noise reduction system, also called dark frame subtraction, effectively doubles the amount of time required to take a picture, and is used only for exposures longer than one second. Noise reduction can reduce the amount of details in your picture, as some image information may be removed along with the noise. So, you might want to use this feature with moderation.

If you shoot in a RAW mode, you can also apply the noise reduction to a lesser extent by using post processing software like Photoshop, Lightroom, CaptureNX2 or Aperture later on the computer.

Source: David Busch's Nikon D90 Guide to Digital SLR Photography