Strobe Light - Blog Posts

Experiment Water droplets. One of my sons jokingly quipped that this could be done with paint, milk, or pigs blood. I used water and a glass pyrex dish that I could slide paper under (which accounts for the pyrex logo in every shot…sigh…should've used an unbranded dish or a plastic container).

I also used colored paper as flash reflectors, and an off-camera YN560II flash aimed at the  paper. Used another reflector opposite (almost camera-left) angled a bit. Had some ambient daylight as well.

You need to manually focus on the point where your water droplets fall (AF won't lock in on it otherwise) and use a tripod. I shot at sync speed (1/200 for Canon consumer-end) manual flash, 1/4 to 1/2 for most shots.

You'll get the feel for your flash and camera on this exercise. It is ALL timing. The coveted "crown splash" shot (top) was literally in 3–4 out of over 170 shots.

Want to try again sometime with constants (my LED hardware store light and a few Fluorescent clip lamps).