High-Speed Photography with Splashes, Flashes, and a Fish Tank (Photography Tutorial)

An inexpensive 10 gallon fish tank was purchased at Walmart for about $12 and was being elevated by two ladders and a strong wooden board between each one. A Squeegee thingy was also purchased with the tank to remove water drops that splash onto the surface of the glass after dropping fruit or vegetables. You will also want to get some Windex and some paper towels to remove any smudges or residue from the glass before setting it up for photos.

20X30 foam board (black) was used as the background. It was being held up by a reflector holder which was attached to a light stand. You can make the background darker if you move it further away from the fish tank, but you will need something bigger than a 20×30 board.

A Nikon SB-700 Flash was underneath the tank on a tripod, aimed up at the board (you only need this flash if you are using a white background) while two LumenPro LP160 flashes were attached to the two light stands on 1/32 power.

One LP160 flash was  above the water aimed downward; this casts the reflections coming from the water surface onto your subject. The second flash was in front of the fishtank, towards the right side, aiming slightly upward at the pepper. You can position the lights in any way you want, this is just how I was doing it for this session.

You may want to get some adjustable brackets to mount to the top of the light stands in order to tilt the flash up and down.

All flashes have RF-602 receivers attached to them, although you can set any given flash to “Slave mode” and it will fire whenever it detects another flash firing, so you don’t necessarily need three RF-602 receivers on all of your flashes if you are working in a small studio space like this; you really only need one. The RF-602 receivers can also be placed on any standard tripod screw, so if you already have an extra tripod but no light stands handy, you can just use a regular tripod.

The LumenPro LP160 flashes are only $170 and have the same amount of light output when compared to the Nikon SB-900, a flagship flash that costs $500! Keep in mind the LP160’s are manual flashes; nothing about them is automatic. This doesn’t bother me at all because I mostly use manual mode anyway.

The camera that was being used (least important item) was a Nikon D300s with a 50mm prime lens and the RF-602 transceiver to fire the flashes when the camera takes a picture.

Last but not least: The stuff you drop into the fish tank! In the video I was using regular peppers, but you can use anything.  Legos, coins, lemons, limes, miniature pumpkins… you can even just use your fist to punch the water in anger if you can’t decide what to use.

Anger

Pepper

The waterline was removed in Photoshop in the pepper photo above.

If you liked this tutorial and want more, be sure to check out my Trick Photography and Special Effects ebook+video course.

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