I did Photo101 in November 2014 and one of the prompts was “Water”. I posted a photo of water dripping from a tap where I caught the individual droplets in the frame. It was quite a popular post, you can see it here. This weekend has been a stormy and rain-filled one here in Brisbane, so I took a moment this afternoon (Sunday 22nd March) to do something similar and to demonstrate the effect of fast and slow shutter speeds. I was fully committed to this experiment, lying on the ground and getting soaked with the little flood that was forming from a gap between my patio roof and the house. Consequently, I took these photos quite quickly – I was getting drenched, I didn’t want my camera to get too wet, and I wasn’t sure how long the heavy rain would last.
As usual, I used my trusty Olympus OMD EM5 camera. I attached the 60mm (120mm equivalent) lens.
For my first experiment, I captured drops hitting my little pathway to my garden shed. The first shot uses quite a fast shutter speed (1/1000th of a second) and you can see the drops hitting the pavers. The second shot uses a very slow shutter speed (the shutter was open for one second) and you can see that it looks like it’s not raining at all. At this point, I had to get up because I was getting soaked!
For my second experiment, I attached my camera to my tripod and pointed it at my guttering. It was raining so heavily that the water gushing out over the top of it, the gutter couldn’t contain all the water. In the first image, the shutter speed is very fast (1/1000th of a second) and you can see individual droplets forming. In the second image, the shutter speed is very slow (1/15th of a second) and the water can be seen as a stream instead of individual droplets.
My header image is one that I took and cropped quite heavily in Lightroom. It was shot at f/2.8 and at 1/1000s. I had to bump the ISO up to 400 for this one to brighten the image a little. I love the splash being made here.
I thought this would be a good addition for Lucile’s Photo101 Rehab Clinic. I hope this is interesting of useful for you, I find it very enjoyable to see how light behaves, the science of it, how modifying the numbers can greatly alter the experimental outcome 😀
I would love to hear your thoughts.
x desleyjane
Musings of a Frequent Flying Scientist 
I’d love to hear from you!