When Two Drops Meet a Pellet

If you thought that taking the perfect water drop photograph is as cool as it can get, think again.

When Corry discussed the concept of shooting a drop, he talked about how you can get interesting shapes and crowns by making two drops meet at a precise timing. It was pretty impressive. Photographer and water drop shooter extraordinaire Markus Reugels (A.K.A maianer) took the concept one step further and had those drops meet a pellet.

I asked Markus how he does that, and it ain’t that simple. Aside using a special device called StopShot to time the drops, it involves building a special pellet rifle. This is how Markus describes it:

For this kind of shots i built me a little Rifle. It´s simple but it Works very good. An Tube where the Pellets fits in, a bottle as Pressure Tank and a valve to control the Air stream to the pellet. The Drops are controlled with a valve too. All Times and the shutter of the Camera was set in the StopShot . When you have found the right times, it´s very simple to reproduce the shot´s.

I use only Vivitar 285 Flashes. They are cheap and easy to modify. I make some modification to regulate the Power down to 1/2048, for the Pellet shots i chose 1/32 or 1/64. The Flashes are triggerd via a wireless trigger (Yongnuo RF 602) . The base lighting is with 2 flashes behind frosted glass. and a third Flash to get some light on the pellet. These flash are on the Right side through a frosted glass too.

Love how he says “very simple to reproduce”…