How to freeze rain drops

[woffles]

Try this

http://www.lucascobb.com/make-it-rain-photography-tutorial/

 

[weavster]

Thanks loads.

I've tried and tried with real rain and been very under-whelmed by the results. Mushy streaky rain drops without any crystal magic. I think the sprinkler and low sun plan may do the trick.

Thanks for the post. If any one has suceeded in capturing a real rain storm with high definition rain drops, I would love to see.
thanks again

 

[johnson W Ng]

Here are some results of frozen raindrops for a photo contest in Philippines...

http://www.digitalphotographer.com.ph/forum/showthread.php?t=41092&highlight=Barry&page=3

regards,
Johnson

 

[johnson W Ng]

The 5th shots for that link won the first prize by the way. The Photographer is Barry Millare.

regards,
Johnson

 

[closeupfanatic]

I'll just have to experiment.

Absolutely. I can't do it for you because we're only getting snow here for the next 3 months...

I have supposed that the faster the shutter/greater the exposure,the better.

True

Googled that rain drops travel at 9m/s.

That's a bit low - 20 m/s is more common (see

http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/1520-0450%281969%29008%3C0249%3ATVORA%3E2.0.CO%3B2
if you really really want answers :-()

1 mm diameter is a typical raindrop size, so it falls its own diameter in 1/20,000 second. That's why you need a fast strobe, as mentioned above, to resolve individual drops.

I'm not a physics genius, but are there any implications re distance from rain drop

No, if you want to image individual drops. But, try the maximum shutter speed you have and see if you like the results - maybe separate elongated streaks will look neat. And, experiment with image superposition - large-aperture shots of rain at different focussing distances (different image sizes) superposed on a slow-exposure infinity-focussed scene.