wet weather game

[crisscross]

If I am wasting my time do just say, but would rather some others tried, ideally in better light, and made something of the basic idea

Shot at extreme settings ISO 1600 f40 as you will find that you need DOF to extend from the drop quite close to and whatever is being reflected. 400mm with Canon D500 close up ring, poor man's macro focussing at about 200mm beyond end of lens.

see gallery http://www.pbase.com/crisscross/dewdrops if attachments disappear

[David]

Hi Chris - nice idea; with all the wet weather there'll be plenty of opportunity to try. Have you looked at any Dof stacking software? That might be an option.

David

[crisscross]

I don't pretend to understand the optics of these shots - maybe Sean could work it out - but the raindrop is acting as an extra lens element 200mm in front of the glass and it appears to bring the optimum focus point between the glass and the drop itself, ie the raindrop is projecting branches etc onto a plane in front of itself. I suspect software would struggle at understanding this too!! The shots posted are a very large proportion of the full frame to get the detail that they do; the focus method is: set to manual and min focus distance for the unmod 80-400 lens, ie 2.3M, then moving an inch or so back and forth to optimise. At f40 it is picking up the muck on the front of the glass (healed out), so supect the picture plane is about 50mm in front of the glass as you never get significan DOF from macro or quasi macro set up.

Compare with size of the raindrop (and therefore poor detail quality of internal image) from using 18-135 lens at 135 and same distance away, again at min focus distance for the lens.
http://www.pbase.com/crisscross/image/106940843

I have seen better shots using a macro lens, but from someone who would have used tripod, D2 and probably re-arranged/strung his roses to optimise it and done in decent light.

Have a go!

[crisscross]

Got a decent morning and so created a whole gallery of these in colour - they seem to cross over a boundary in being at least as interesting as abstracts as nature studies
http://www.pbase.com/crisscross/dewdrops
Do let me have some feedback folks even if 'bin the lot'

[milleniummuppet]

WOW,

Ok I may not know much about photography but in my opinion, there are some really nice images there!
Lovin the shining droplets!!

[Lincs1]

Just looked at the others, some interesting ones there, my two favourites are "the green lump is the Malvern Hills" and "_DSC7314.jpg", like the suns rays and the refracted image of the first, and the image in the second.

Some of the others are interesting but I feel a little too dark.

Lincs1

[taken]

photographing a water drop let! has been attempted many times by all, in various styles just the thot of the waterdroplet is soothing enough very good subject,but here except the beautiful oval shape of the droplet,there is nothing exciting to gaze at a baby in a uterus i never get bored watching.....i just have no idea why that uterus thot popped into my mind right now! maybe something here reminds me of those uterus pics whatever! glad this is black and white pic

[crisscross]

photographing a water drop let! has been attempted many times by all, in various styles...,there is nothing exciting to gaze at a baby in a uterus i never get bored watching.....i just have no idea why that uterus thot popped into my mind right now! maybe something here reminds me of those uterus pics whatever! glad this is black and white pic

Yes Taken, it is the content of the water doplet, or rather apparent content, that enlivens it, maybe just as an embryo transforms the uterus towards new life, but no access to MRI camera

[milleniummuppet]

I think of it more as a hidden detail/beauty.
Every time it rains, all you see is a grey, cold, dark, wetting annoyance.
But a close-up shot of one droplet kind of opens a new WORLD, the whole scene reflected in one of these billions of billions little droplets - that you just took for granted.
In that way the drop has quite a mysterious aura about it.

[Don Hoey]

.......Shot at extreme settings ISO 1600 f40

Chris,

f40

When I got my D2X I was lucky enough to find this site and read the excellent tutorial on diffraction. I conducted a test ( not saying I disbelieved what I was reading ) but to determine how far I could stop down before loss of detail became unacceptable for me. On the 12mp D2X that turned out to be f13. Smearing of fine detail by f22 was very noticeable and by f32 it was dire.

If your intention is that the reflection in the drop should be as sharp as its support I really do suggest you do your own test to establish a minimum acceptable apperture. After that you are into increasing lens to subject distance to increase dof and cropping the resulting image, or using dof stacking software.

I have used Combine ZM ( freebee ) with great success. I have found that the long edge often needs cropping as the frames often do not align at this point, but allow for that in framing the shot.
I posted a whole series of proving images on Wold Photography Forum but as I do not have an image hosting site I have yet to check into posting pics here.

Don

[crisscross]

Chris,

f40

When I got my D2X I was lucky enough to find this site and read the excellent tutorial on diffraction. I conducted a test ( not saying I disbelieved what I was reading ) but to determine how far I could stop down before loss of detail became unacceptable for me. On the 12mp D2X that turned out to be f13. Smearing of fine detail by f22 was very noticeable and by f32 it was dire.

Don

On the optics, I do slightly wonder whether the diffraction/airy disc are quite so independent of focal length, or rather of the actual lens as Sean's technical note says. The Nikkor 80-400VR performs some impressive acrobatics to keep its body as short as it is and there is very limited space for movement of the diaphragm, maybe 60mm, between 400 and 80. That roughly doubles distance from sensor, whereas FL and actual size of aperture go up 5x. Nikon say diffraction from f16, 'significant' fro f22-32. http://imaging.nikon.com/products/im...kkor/n35_e.htm


Also why would makers bother with useless f stops? Part of the answer is cropping, in this particular genre (if I may promote it to that), it is the central 1/3 or so of the sensor area that is important; outside the dewdrop, it is background which I am happy to have out of focus.

I didn't even know I had f40 until I got into trial-and-error (or feedback as I prefer to think of it). No motive whatsoever for using a smaller aperture other than it worked better. And don't forget it has the close-up ring on the end limiting the DOF even more than the unadulterated focal length.

If you can kindly dig out the Rose-through-dewdrop I seem to remember you posted on WPF some time back Don, we could go on to the aesthetic side and continue the optics in a technical thread.

Chris

[Colin Southern]

Just a couple of quick musings before I dump the family at their grandparents for the day ...

1. With regards to diffraction, it's worse on crop-factor cameras.

2. Although it generally kicks in somewhere around F11 - 16, careful capture sharpening can "psudo offset" it a bit. I'm often shooting at F22 - keeping in mind that unless you've printing extraordinarily large, diffraction isn't usually obvious other than at 100% on a screen (or "in the lab" as I call it!).

Cheers,

Colin - pbase.com/cjsouthern