2. To hold the water, I picked up a betta fish tank for about $5 at Walmart. I wanted it to be as clear as possible, so I used filtered water and filled it up as close to the top as I could without it spilling over. You might have noticed the tonic water in the background. I used that later, but we'll get to that.
5. Because a high shutter speed is required, I also placed two studio lights on either side. Now, this is quite a bit of electricity in close proximity to water that is going to be splashing around. Please be sure to not place the lights too close to the tank and that any extension cords or plug-ins aren't exposed.
6. Finally, the camera set up. First was the focus. I placed my strawberry in the water about where I would drop it and focused. Then I switched to manual focus to lock it in. Next, I needed as wide an aperture as possible. With this lens, that was f/5. I bumped the ISO up to 1000, which allowed me to set the shutter speed to 1/6400 sec. Click the next button to see the final images.
The first thing I did was mark out on the foam board the area I wanted to cut out. For stability, I marked 1.5 inches into each side. On the cardboard light box I made before I only went in 0.75 inches. This made the box a little flimsy and hard to move around. Sometimes the sides wanted to bend in.
I used the white duct tape to piece the five sides together. It's worth noting that I did have to cut down the back side to fit. I decided to do this as I was putting it together to make sure I would cut off the right amount. Also, I liked making the light box this way because there is no lip on the front. That was a problem I had to deal with on the one made from cardboard.
The last step was to cover the holes with tissue paper. This acts very nicely to diffuse the light. I used one of the cut-outs to help keep the paper flat and in place as I was taping it. Initially, I wanted to create a light box to control reflections when I shoot glass. As you'll see in the following images, another benefit is being able to control shadows.
Decided this week I'd try my hand at some time-lapse photography. The first thing I had to do was find out how long it would take an ice cube to melt at room temperature. Turned out to be roughly an hour and a half. Then, I had to do some math. I knew I wanted a 30 second duration at 10 frames per second. So, this gives me how many images I would need (30 seconds x 10 frames per second = 300 images). Next, I figured the total melting time in seconds (1.5 hours = 90 minutes x 60 seconds = 5,400 seconds). Then, I divided the time in seconds by the required number of images (5,400 / 300 = 18 seconds). This tells me I need the camera to take a shot every 18 seconds. So, I set the camera on a tripod, used my remote shutter release to set up the timer, and went to edit some photos from a family shoot for the next hour and a half. When it came close to the time being over, I noticed that the ice cube hadn't completely melted. So, I quickly reset the timer and let it continue to shoot until the cube was gone. This is why the video ended up being 40 seconds instead of the 30 I had originally planned on.
Once you have your pane of glass treated with the Rain-X, spray it with your water. For larger beads, shoot your water closer to the glass. Here, I decided the beads were too small, so I sprayed it down again. Also, I noticed that my refraction wasn't right. The flag was facing the wrong way. Easy enough to fix in Photoshop, but why not get it right in camera if possible?
The use of bokeh in photography is very common. If you are unfamiliar with the term, it is simply blurring out the background of your image to keep the focus on your subject. This is typically achieved by using a wide aperture and fast shutter speed. It's an extremely useful tool and, as we'll see here, you can even manipulate it to create interesting patterns! So, let's get started!
Here is my star! I cut out a 4"x4" piece of black construction paper and then marked off my center point. From there, I had to do a little math to see how big I needed to make the star. It needs to stay the size of the aperture. This was calculated by dividing my focal length by my widest aperture; in this case 50mm divided by f/1.8 gave me approximately 28mm. So I marked out 14mm each way from the center point.
