Milk Drops In Water

Milk Drops in Water
Heather Faircloth

Method:

For this portion of the project, we used the basic setup and placed a small cup of clear water underneath the milk dispenser and photogate. By adjusting the delay unit on the flash, we acheived photos of different stages of the splash. The most dificult factor to deal with in this section of our project was keeping the water clear, because we'd have to change the water after every drop of milk. To avoid taking too much time, however, we continued taking photos even when the water was slightly cloudy. We got less photos of the clear water because of this, but were able to properly set up and prepare so that when we attempted with clear water we got good results.

We were able to get very good photos in this section of our project. We spent less time on this section due to time constraints, but it yeilded some of our best results. We found out that it's harder to take pictures of water with a huge flash; the reflection tends to overexpose the photo. Therefore, we had to figure out how to turn the flash so that it wasn't facing the water cup but still put enough light on the subject for a good photo. We experimented with colored lenses (like in the last photo) but didn't entirely like the effect. After getting past the flash and delay issues, however, we were able to take all the photos we needed to meet the goal we had. I believe we could easily have corrected some of the problems we encountered on this project if we had more time. For example, had we been able to keep multiple cups of water ready to put in between photos, we would have been able to get more of the clear water shots.

Gallery: