Lynnea Parker

 High-Speed Photography is really easy to do and produces amazing results! All it takes is a manual camera; preferably a SLR with internal flash, clear bowl and some spare time. In this tutorial I will show you how to make some of your own great pictures.

Picture Taken by Lynnea P.
Info:
Shutter speed: 1/125 sec
Aperture: F.8
Focal Length: 38mm
ISO: 1600
Flash: YES
Setting: Aperture Priority

Get a glass bowl, in this picture I used a clear salad bowl. I would suggest using: fish tank,
glass; cup, bowl, container. Almost anything will work but it needs to be deep and wide. Then
get pieces of pure white paper and/or cloth and wrap the glass with it on the out side. This is
so you can’t see distracting background objects. If you don’t get all the areas, then in your
picture you will have blotchy areas and reflections which wont turn out very well.
Once you have your bowl wrapped, make sure you have an area open for taking pictures.

Fill the bowl half way with water, you will need some room for the splash effect and the
object. Make sure you don’t fill it too full, because you DON’T want the rim of the bowl in
your picture.

Using lamps, preferably with white florescent lights, position them over the bowl so the light hits it directly. You don’t want glare or reflections. If you use two lamps it is easier to balance the lighting. If you are using flash, which is a good idea, you might not need the lamps but they are good for deflecting reflections. Then when you have your area ready, as in the picture shown, set your camera settings and find a small tripod or stack of books to put your camera on. Turn your camera to the aperture priority setting. The camera settings I prefer to use are F.8 or F.10 you need this aperture so your falling objects are in focus. If you use F.3 your objects would fall out of focusing range. Then, I like to use flash, so turn it on and set your ISO to 800 or 1600 ISO, which ever you think is best. With 800 ISO you get a bit of motion blur which can have a nice effect but for sharp solid images you will need 1600 ISO.

* Set your lighting type to Florescent, white light. That way
your background will be white like in my picture (1st one).

Put your camera on the tri-pod or stack of books, and center the water line in the middle of your frame so it will be balanced. Get some interesting objects and start dropping away! The first several shots may not work, but I guarantee the more you work at your timing the better they will turn out. Have fun and don’t be camera shy :)

This tutorial is copyright to Lynnea Parker, please do not claim it as your own.

Any question or concerns please  E-mail or leave your question in my guest book with your e-mail so I can get back to you.