Shooting water droplets

Shooting water droplets can be very challenging task. You will have to get the timing correct in order to get the droplets formed. A fast shutter speed is to be used to freeze the droplet formed. In this photo below, I used a high speed sync flash, coupled with high shutter speed and continuous frame to capture the droplet.

Preparation to be made:
1. Use a clear plastic rectangular container to contain the water.
2. For the water droplet, I use plastic bag filled with water and use a small tape to tape over it and use a needle to poke a hole. If you do it correctly, you will get droplets. If not, you will get streak of water dripping. Alternatively, you can use a dropper to create water droplet.
3. Try experiment with different height to obtain the desire water droplet.
4. Since water itself is colourless, use of colour paper to help "add" colour to the water. Experiment with different with different colour paper to obtain the result you like.

Setting to be used:
1. Mount your camera on a tripod.
2. Set your camera to Manual mode. Set shutter speed to the maximum of your flash sync and set aperture to f/5.6.
3. Set your flash to manual mode. Select flash output that can properly expose the picture. In both photo shown, I use 1/32 as output to expose the picture.
4. If you have a cable release, you can attach it to the camera and use it to trigger your camera.
5. In this step, I will use a needle to poke the plastic bag. Using a pen, I try to do a manual focus on the area where the water droplet will form. You will do it manually cause water droplet is a relatively fast process. If you use auto focus, there are times where there is no droplet formed and the camera will hunt for an area to focus. A manual focus will help to save time as it eliminates the time for the camera to hunt for a focusing area.
6. Wait for the droplet to come down and start shooting.

You will have to try a lot of times to get the desired water droplet. Try to play with different colour paper to get different effects. Here is a video by Waugh of how water droplet behaves.