American in Spain

Splish Splash

June 6, 2008
Water Drop Splash Pillar

The other day, I got out my little mini tripod, a wine glass, and a black 3-ring binder and made my first serious attempt at splash photography. My camera was set on the fastest shutter speed that will allow the built-in flash to function, which is 4 milliseconds. It turned out to be plenty fast enough. All the drops were made by me wetting my hand in a bowl and holding it about 20 cm above the wine glass. I tried to press the shutter right as I saw the drop begin to fall. With the time it took the signal to get from my eyes to my shutter finger, it came out about right. Let me know what you think. Water Drop With Bubbles

Check it out! There's a bubble inside the drop!

Water Drop Splash Pillar

Nice splash pillar. I couldn't find a more technical name for it. Anyone know?

Water Drop Splash Pillar

Pillar with missile.

Water Drop Splash Pillar

You can see the wave propagating away very nicely on this one.

Water Drop Hits Water

A drop crater that will launch one of those pillars. Check out the tiny, tiny drops being thrown away.

Pretty fun stuff. But I'm having trouble coming up with other ideas of things to try without a high speed video camera. Any ideas?