León Dafónte Fernández is an Art photographer living in Cairns, Queensland. He has been a photographer for 20 years and experimenting with high speed liquid art photography since 2011.
What you see on this site are high resolution water drop pictures, captured with high speed flash. Image editing is used only to clean up the background, balance and colour, brightness and contrast. A DSLR camera with a macro lens captures the images, and a short duration flash is used to freeze the droplets.
All of these water drops were done by laser trigger or microcontroller with precise timing.
Equipment:
· Nikon D5100 or Nikon D800
· 5 YN-560 Flash with wireless Hot shoe
· Tamron 90mm f/2.8 Macro lens
· 4 x 12volt Solenoid Valve connected to a GLIMPSECATCHER Micro Controller and a Laptop
Settings: The ideal ISO setting for the Camera is ISO100 to ISO400 and an aperture of f14 with APS-C Sensor to f29 with a Fullframe in bulb modus. The bulb modus makes it necessary to have the room dimly lit or better still completely dark. The speed light flash guns are usually set to a power of 1/20000 sec.
Positioning of the flash guns varies with the type of lighting. Usually two flash guns behind the water tray, with a white acrylic glass in between as a light diffuser. This gives a nice soft overall light on the surface of the water and will result in a good reflection, and one flash on the right or left side of the drop.
Colours in the liquid are food colouring. Colours for the background are from coloured gels on the flash guns. The liquids are water, cream, milk, or a combination all. The water tray is 20cm x 20cm, the glass bowl is 5cm filled to the rim. Water has a higher viscosity by adding guar gum, (a food thickener for sauces), or glucose, making it easier to catch a well-formed water drop sculpture
Water Drop Photography - Liquid Art - Fluid - Drop Art- Water Drop Art - High Speed Photography - Collision - Splash - Macro
