Trippy macro

nice start, but i think it'd be better if one of the bubbles was in focus to show the reflection of whatever was underneath, one of two bubbles are almost there, but thats probably rather fiddly to actually do

jim mij wrote:

nice start, but i think it'd be better if one of the bubbles was in focus to show the reflection of whatever was underneath, one of two bubbles are almost there, but thats probably rather fiddly to actually do

I could have had the bubbles in focus (and it will show a lot of dust on the surface and can look nice too) but in stead I try to use the water drops as lenses, and focus on the images they produce. The shallower the DOF the harder it is to get all the drops in focus, but I'm working on it

Bas

Bas Hamstra wrote:

jim mij wrote:

nice start, but i think it'd be better if one of the bubbles was in focus to show the reflection of whatever was underneath, one of two bubbles are almost there, but thats probably rather fiddly to actually do

I could have had the bubbles in focus (and it will show a lot of dust on the surface and can look nice too) but in stead I try to use the water drops as lenses, and focus on the images they produce.

sorry Bas, thats what i actually meant, to have focus on the item in the bubble. You can probably only get 1 bubble perfect, and that bubble should then be the main point of interest in the photo... if its was easy i'd do one to demonstrate

The shallower the DOF the harder it is to get all the drops in focus, but I'm working on it

time for some stacking ?

Bas

jim mij wrote:

Bas Hamstra wrote:

jim mij wrote:

nice start, but i think it'd be better if one of the bubbles was in focus to show the reflection of whatever was underneath, one of two bubbles are almost there, but thats probably rather fiddly to actually do

I could have had the bubbles in focus (and it will show a lot of dust on the surface and can look nice too) but in stead I try to use the water drops as lenses, and focus on the images they produce.

sorry Bas, thats what i actually meant, to have focus on the item in the bubble. You can probably only get 1 bubble perfect, and that bubble should then be the main point of interest in the photo... if its was easy i'd do one to demonstrate

The shallower the DOF the harder it is to get all the drops in focus, but I'm working on it

time for some stacking ?

Bas

If you look at the second image, there are some drops pretty sharp, ie you can clearly see the lettering on the "colorful remote" (that's the reflected object) buttons. Or better said: parts of the object are sharp, it seems the edge sharpness of waterdrops is not great I am not sure stacking helps for that. At the moment I am more worried about dust and scratches I must say, thanks for commenting Jim, always appreciated!

Bas

Bas Hamstra wrote:

If you look at the second image, there are some drops pretty sharp,

Yes, this image does seem to have a few where the object in the background are in focus in spots.

What is that object?

One thing I find is that I do a terrible job of first completely cleaning whatever I'm shooting. This results in my being anal about spotting the resulting image in post.

Nice venture into the abstract universe!

- Gary

grsnovi wrote:

Bas Hamstra wrote:

If you look at the second image, there are some drops pretty sharp,

Yes, this image does seem to have a few where the object in the background are in focus in spots.

What is that object?

It is a very small remote with colorful round buttons (for fake candle lights). Size is 4x9 centimenters.This was a sort of proof of concept to see if my setup works. And I will certainly experiments more with it...!

One thing I find is that I do a terrible job of first completely cleaning whatever I'm shooting. This results in my being anal about spotting the resulting image in post.

Nice venture into the abstract universe!

- Gary

Thanks Gary! Yes I cleaned the glass surface with kleenex tissues, that was a terrible Idea. Specs and dirt all over the place, probably from the kleenex itsself, on the surface, in the waterdrops, everywhere. Next time I will definately do other cleaning, microfiber cloth etc (also tried a vacuum cleaner, BAD IDEA!)

Thanks for commenting,

Bas

philzucker wrote:

Bas Hamstra wrote:

I cleaned the glass surface with kleenex tissues, that was a terrible Idea. Specs and dirt all over the place, probably from the kleenex itsself, on the surface, in the waterdrops, everywhere. Next time I will definately do other cleaning, microfiber cloth etc (also tried a vacuum cleaner, BAD IDEA!)

Good to know that others have the same problems! I like the results very much, Bas, a nice idea put to good use.

Care to enlighten us how you put the (water?) drops on the glass (pipette?) and how you placed the glass in relation to background object? Also the lighting chosen (source, angle) would be nice to know.

A lot of questions you of course don't have to answer, but I'm curios.

Thanks for sharing your pictures!

Phil

Hi Phil,

Thanks Phil, for your kind comments, much appreciated. For the water droplets I use the nose-spray bottles that come with a pipet (in stead of sprayer) and I use distilled water. I am getting a bit handier at making smaller droplets this way.

The idea is to have layers, ideally 3 layers, that is two glass layers and a background layer. The top layer is glass and contains the droplets. Second layer is glass and contains the object to be reflected. The third layer is the background. Where the object does not cover the glass, the background "shines through". If you do nothing with the background (no lighting) it will be black because of light falloff.

Then I light the object from aside, with a grid in place to make the light more directional, the object must be lit, but not the first glass surface.

Then the idea is to have the object blurred (totally, somewhat, that's to play with) in direct sight and to have the reflections sharp (or the drops surface, or nothing). Now you can play with distance of camera to droplets and F-stop and get very interesting effects. Ideally you could also vary the distance between the two glass plates, but I don't have that yet.

Kind regards,

Bas