Canon 5D Mk IV – EF 100mm Macro – 0.6 sec, f/2.8, ISO 50, Spot Meter

Today’s Photo of the Day was a concept photo. I did a previous raindrop photo of daisy’s that I really liked. After that, I thought I’d try a photo with the grandkids and Mason. So this was a lot of work – over 3.5 hours. It’s a focus stack of 18 images. I started out by using a small piece of plexiglass but found out that it might be too thick – there appears to be too much distortion and it was almost impossible to see any image in the drops. I reverted back to a piece of packing tape.

Next up was taking the pics. I chose 3 images – the grandkids and Mason. I set up the tape, applied water drops, and started taking pics. I set the camera to manual focus because the depth of field was really narrow and took 6 pics each. I put them into Lightroom and did some initial post-processing, then put each package of 6 photos into Photoshop and merged them so I only had 3 images. I then took those 3 and put them back into Photoshop as layers, then went to work on pulling up the images from each layer and making it a single pic.

I feel this technique may be better suited for rounder items (like the daisy). In Colin’s pic, notice how his head takes up most of the drop. Whereas with Andie and Mason, they just don’t fill out the drops as well. In all honesty, the pic didn’t turn out as I was expecting. I’m not sure they actually look like raindrops. I may try coming in at an angle. This photo was taken looking straight down so the drops look flat. I need to think about, and practice, this technique a bit more.