Rain drop photography
Are you looking for something new and fun to try. Rain drops. You will need a macro lens but you can find them very inexpensively. Here is how to do it.
Macro raindrop photography tips
Water drops are an excellent subject to shoot under a macro setup, and they look particularly attractive on flowers.
It was a dry day, so in order to create our ‘raindrops’ we supplied our own water, using a fine mist spray bottle. This is a handy piece of kit to have for a macro shoot, as water droplets add a touch of sparkle to just about any subject, from insects and spiders’ webs to abstract still-life subjects.
The secret to capturing successful shots is to find the right flower, and the yellow-orange stamens against the blue petals of our subject created a striking effect. It also helps to shoot on a calm day with no breeze, to ensure the petals are in sharp focus.
For our shoot we used a 105mm macro lens that was capable of shooting at 1:1 reproduction ratio – this means that we can get in super-close to our subject. If you don’t have a macro lens you can use an extension tube with a regular lens.
01 Chose a subject
Choose a flower that has a variety of colours, and interesting detail, and ideally one that’s positioned in partial shade to diffuse the sunlight; if your subject is in direct sunlight you can use the diffuser typically included in a five-in-one reflector kit to soften the light. Set your camera up on a tripod, and secure all the adjustments firmly.
02 Camera settings
Set your camera to Aperture Priority (Av) mode, and set a narrow Aperture of f/11 to capture a good depth of field, so that most of the flower and water drops are in sharp focus. Set a low ISO of 100 to retain optimum image quality. Even though your camera is on a tripod, if it’s a windy day you may need to increase the ISO to enable a fast enough shutter speed to compensate for any wind movement.
03 Just add water
Spray your flower with a fine mist of water. You want to have water on all the parts of the flower that will be in shot, but don’t add too much, otherwise it’ll start to run off, or the flower may become weighed down and will droop.
04 Manual focus
Switch your lens to Manual so that you can focus your shot precisely. Enable Live View mode, and zoom in to 10x magnification. Scroll to the centre of the flower, and then adjust the focus until this area is perfectly sharp. Zoom out again and start shooting, using the 2-second self-timer option or a remote release to avoid camera shake; the slightest vibration can completely ruin a macro shot.
05 Crop for composition
Crop into the image to remove some of the empty space on the left-hand side, and to reposition the flower so that its centre sits in the middle of the frame.
06 Exposure tweaks
Set the Exposure slider to +0.95 to brighten the image, and set Contrast to +23. To reduce the slightly overexposed highlights set Highlights to -55 and Whites to -48. Set Shadows to +23 to add some fill light, and set Blacks to +10. Finally push the Clarity slider up to +23 to enhance the fine detail. Click Open Image.
07 Boost the contrast
In Elements, add a Levels adjustment layer, and set the Shadows slider to 14 and the Highlights slider to 241 to fine-tune the contrast. Next, make sure the top layer is selected and press Ctrl+Alt+Shift+E to create a merged layer at the top of the stack.
08 Unsharp mask
To sharpen the image go to Enhance > Unsharp Mask. Set Amount to 80%, Radius to 2 pixels and Threshold to 0. Press OK to apply. Finally, go to Layer > Flatten Image and save the image as a JPEG.
