More work on Something New II - DPChallenge Forums

05/17/2004 10:15:21 AM · #1

I wanted to try the infamous ‘water-drops-on-glass’ technique for the Something New II challenge. I found that it wasn’t as easy as I thought it would be. I spent a whole day, and a lot of shots, trying in vain to get the look I was after. I tried several different setups and couldn’t get the lighting to work with my choice of background material. The black background wouldn’t stay black! It was Mother’s Day and we had guests over and a dinner reservation, so I eventually had to go with what I thought was my best take. This is the shot that I finally entered. It did better than expected, taking 74th place with an average vote of 5.582. Surprisingly, only one person commented that they hated it because of the over-used technique.

Anyway, I spent another day working with it, trying different lighting setups, etc. I eventually got the best result using black sheets to build a tent over the whole mess and placing a light inside the tent. I like this one much better. What do you think?

--Mick

Neuferland

Google Pixel 2

05/17/2004 10:18:52 AM · #2

The second one is better as far as focus and lighting go but there is too much water on the glass to me. The little spots are distracting. Any way to clean those up?

Deannda

peecee

Canon EF 17-40mm f/4.0 L USM

05/17/2004 10:19:54 AM · #3

I liked the original but this is a vast improvement. IMHO

Neil

Fujifilm X-T30

Nikon AF-S NIKKOR 24-70mm f/2.8G ED

05/17/2004 12:02:20 PM · #4

I like the new one better, but I do see it as "too busy".

What's really cool about it is where there are big drops that almost look like copies of the planet. Do you have an outake where there are just a few "big drops" feigning planethood?

Kylie

Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ35

05/17/2004 12:17:41 PM · #5

New one is awesome. What's better, is that you kept at it until you got what you wanted and did it "for yourself" after the challenge was over.

05/17/2004 01:47:05 PM · #6

Originally posted by Neuferland:

The second one is better as far as focus and lighting go but there is too much water on the glass to me. The little spots are distracting. Any way to clean those up?

Deannda

One of the comments I got on my entry said something to the effect that the water drops were too sparse, and I thought so too. Maybe I went too far in the other direction with this one. However, I like the way the little drops can appear to be the same size, only farther away. What I don't like is that the earth isn't visible in the drops that aren't over the earth's image. I thought about cropping them out, but I wanted the composition to show the roundness of the earth.

Thanks for your comments!

05/17/2004 01:51:00 PM · #7

Originally posted by nshapiro:

No, I tried some tighter crops, but I really wanted to have the whole earth visible. But, the crops that contained the entire earth had too many drops with no reflection at all. So I compromised by cutting of part of the globe.

Thanks for the reply!