Photo

Sister Moon

will be my guide..

Strawberry Away; how I took it.

This week I took this shot of a strawberry falling into water. In this post I will give a description of how I took this shot.

First I started with some fresh strawberries ofcourse. I also used a small aquarium which I filled with water. My camera, the Canon EOS 50D was mounted on the tripod which stood before the table on which the aquarium stood. The camera was about 50 cm from the aquarium and I used the lenshood as a extra protection against splashing water. After 40 takes or so there were a few drops on the hood, but none on the lens or camera.

I used a remote trigger cord to take the pictures so I could drop the strawberry and take the shot when it hit the water. This took some practice but after a while I got the hang of it.

Behind the aquarium I put up a blue towel to get the background I wanted.
I also used a Wireless flash solution from Gadget Infinity called the Cactus V2. On both sides of the aquarium I placed a Flash which froze the action in the aquarium. I used my two Canon speedlights. The Canon Speedlight 430 EX was in manual mode and was on 1/16st power and the Canon Speedlight 580 EX II was on 1/8st power. On both the flashes I used a difuser, these also gave some protection against drops of water; and the body of the flashes I wrapped in plastic.

Most of the splashing water stayed in the aquarium, yesterday I took some pictures of falling strawberries into a glass of water and milk and that gave a whole mess and I had to mop the floor.

These are the settings I used when I took the shot at the top of the page:

Camera:Canon EOS 50D
Exposure:0.013 sec (1/80)
Aperture:f/11.0
Focal Length:100 mm
Exposure:+0.17
ISO Speed:100
Flash:Off (not really, but manual)
Lens:EF100mm f/2.8 Macro USM