This shot was the result of an interesting experiment with aperture. Usually in nature shots I opt for a wide aperture and shallow DOF. I tried that approach with these water droplets, but the result was disappointing. All the drops except the few near the center were out of focus. Luckily, this is in my garden so I headed back to try again. I then took a series of shots with decreasing aperture. This one taken at f/20 resulted in almost all the droplets being in focus. A great reminder to me to choose my aperture more carefully based on the shot.
By the way, I was shooting with my 300 mm telephoto lens and a tripod. The distance from the branches to the rose bush is 20 inches/50 cm.
lovely shot and very nicely done... and interesting experimentation and observation... i too would have assumed a wide aperture was warranted - but i guess like most macro shots, the narrow dof that close up just becomes too narrow to be meaningful
@northy Thank you for your comment, Northy. Interestingly, I was shooting at some distance away with my 300 mm telephoto lens. Focal length was 220 mm. I don't know if that helped or complicated my attempt at focus. It was an interesting comparison. Thanks again for your comment.
This is a great shot -- and interesting to read about the aperture experiment. I have been decidedly unsuccessful in droplet shots so know how hard these are to do!
A perfect droplet shot. Very interesting investigation - what was the distance between the branch and the background to get that shallow DoF even with a narrow aperture?
The simple fact that you're using a 220mm focal length will greatly reduce your DOF. I'd hesitate to stop it down as far as f/20 though as sharpness will start to suffer due to diffraction effects.
Great shot! This still works really well because the length of your zoom and the distance to the background stuff gives you plenty of blur around the lovely, focused drips!
You either had a lot of light or have a very good camera to go to f20 on this shot, as I see your ISO is still nice and low, my camera would never have achieved this, unless you used a tripod? I have to be a real light seeker in this country with the equipment I use!
@jo13 Thank you, Jo. I did use a tripod. It was raining on me and overcast. You can actually see the orange towel that I had draped over my camera at the time in the droplets. My telephoto lens is nice but not an expensive one. I was pleased with how clear they all are. I have never been successful with water drops before.
Very pretty rows of drops on the lovely red branches. Interesting experience and not just a dof /aperture experiment but a dof in relation to focal length experiment.
Nice, Lisa. Just goes to show that at relatively short image distances, particularly at long focal lengths, dof is short even at narrow apertures. Has caught me out on a number o occasions. BTW, there are some good iPhone apps that calculate dof for you at different combinations of image distance, focal length and aperture.
Excellent lesson and a beautiful photo. A shorter focal length would have had much more depth of field at f20, so this was a good lesson in focal length as well as aperture.
Very interesting, Lisa - thanks for the lesson - I have really learned something here. I deal with low light here in the winter months (clouds/evergreen trees surrounding the house), and find the tripod invaluable. This is a lovely capture with beautiful clear drops.
@pflaume My favourite is DofViewer, which I think cost me a couple of pounds. Its a more technical one with graphs and diagrams, but once you get your head around it, it's very useful. Ones like SimpleDOF are free I think, but they just give you the values, which may be enough. There are loads out there, just serach on 'depth of field calculator' or similar.
