This idea was inspired by a great episode of Adorama TV hosted by the ever-so-likeable Gavin Hoey. The setup for shots like this is remarkably simple, and you don’t need any fancy gear (that’s why there are so many shots like this on Instagram). All I used for this was a single softbox behind the lightbulb powered by a single speedlight.
The only thing that you have to do to get shots like this is to make sure that you can keep your flash duration really short (unless you’re using high-speed-sync); and my recommendation is to set your speedlight to no more than 1/64 power. Above that, the flash duration is long enough to incorporate some blur into the shot. Here’s a useful resource .
So, with my shutter speed set at the flash sync speed of 1/160 and the speedlight set at 1/64 (giving me a real duration of something like 1/15,000 of a second), and an aperture of f/14 (for deep depth of field), the only variable left was the ISO. In order to expose things correctly, I needed to set the ISO at 400, rather thany my usual 100.
I held the bulb horizontally with a clamp, positioned over a big pastic tub. Above the bulb about 8 inches I fixed a funnel in place to channel the stream of water. And then it was just a matter of dribbling away repeatedly with colored water. And….about 100 shots later, I have several images that looked good. Then it was just a matter of compositing them in post. Easy peasy. (Oh, and I did take a normally-lighted image of the bulb, so I could clone in the screw portion at the bottom; otherwise that would have just been a black silhouette.)
The only thing I will do differently in the future will be to heed the advice of my wife: “You should use and old towel for stuff like this, not one of my nices ones.”
Here’s the full glory on Flickr.
Meta: Pentax K-3, 100mm f/2.8 macro @f/14, ISO 400, 1/160th of a second, single Strobepro manual speedlight behind a small softbox, many images to create the final 7-shot composite
