Hi I'm Adam and welcome to first man photography today we are going to be
doing some very interesting photography something you could easily try at home
especially during this period of very wet weather that we're having here in
the UK if you don't want to get out and do landscape photography outdoors then
getting into a bit of macro photography a bit of water drop photography in your
home in the dry where it's comfortable warm then this is the video for you
we're going to specifically today be testing out the miops water kits or what
a splash kit whatever they want to call it I've generally used the splash up to
kit which is what I've created all my water drops with miops has really been
picking up a bit of attention a lot of people have asked me about it so I've
gone ahead and bought the kit to test it out myself and just see how it does
basically so what we'll do is we'll get set up I'll show you a few bits and
pieces of how we do water drop photography we'll put that miops system
to the test to produce some interesting images hopefully then do a little bit of
post-processing with a few really nice tips for your post-processing in there
as well and then we'll hopefully be able to create a really nice final print at
the end of it so without further ado let's get set up and then do some water
off photography right let's go
Right i am all set up with the miops splash kits on here it does come with this sort
of clump that you can attach to a tripod which is quite handy but I've got it set
up attached to this clump standard with what Ostroff photography
it is important obviously to have a camera and a macro lens is what is going
to allow you to get in close enough to fill your frame with those water drops
you can really use a kit lens you might have to try get your camera a bit closer
and then crop in in post-production but a macro lens is really gonna help it's
pretty much vital then to use a flash for this I've got this relatively cheap
flash trigger attached to the top of my camera and then some wireless triggers
on on the flashes themselves I've got a two flash set up here one here which is
going to light up the water drop and then another one just the front here
which is lighting up the background the trick with water drop photography
though when it comes to your flashes is is actually the flash that freezes the
action so with your camera the settings are very straightforward you want to
have your camera set to the flash sync speed of the camera in my case with this
Canon it's one two hundredth of a second I then play generally around f11 and
f-16 for the settings you want to be in manual mode manual focus as well which
we'll talk about in a second with your speed lights you want to have them in
manual mode as well and they want to be at a low power the reason for that is
the low power produces a much faster flash remember it's that flash that's
freezing the action I've got this one at the front set at 160 fourth power and
background once sets and 1/128 a fairly low powered self up to my ISO to 640 and
that's giving me a nice bright clear image so when it comes to focus
you want to start getting your drop going which I have done already here
with the my ops we're going to pop it into AV mode for a second and get our
pencil and fired the water drop it off like that and then just place the pencil
into the water where the drop is hitting the surface like that and then we go to
our camera and we want to manual focus on to that pencil just high Matt that's
looking pretty good and we're pretty much ready to shoot I'm
going to play around with a few things today we're going to start off though
with plain water because I've literally never used this miops before and I have
heard there are a few people out there that say you can't use anything thicker
than water now adding xanthan gum to your water drop mixture is pretty much
vital to change the consistency of the water to allow you to get those
beautiful crown effects so if I can't do that with this system this system is
definitely not going to be for me so I've got it set up just with water in
this in this tube at the moment I then have a mixture of just plain water and
xanthan gum mixture in the bottom so that's still gonna be a little bit
thicker which might help me out hopefully very plain setup to start with
call us water colors bath and then a blue background and that's just going to
give me chance to figure out how to use the my op system so I've got it
connected to the camera with the wire here which sort of follows leads around
into the my ops the the Bluetooth connects to the my ups with my phone so
then when I press the button the my ops system should fire the camera off and
the camera then sets the flashes off like this they're a world that was a big
one it's then just the case of playing around with the my ops system on your
phone that's exactly the same as any other system you're essentially if you
change the size of the first drop and the size of the first drop will affect
how tall your water drop is the second one you then put a delay on so that
comes out a moment later and you want it to the first stop to hit the water
bounce back up just as the second one is coming down and it creates that
collision so I'm just gonna play around for a minute with this initial setup to
get an idea of how this works bike the other systems
I've used before it is very similar in terms of you've got to play around until
you find what works for you and it's it's different every time depending on
the consistency of the wall to the height that you've got the dropper above
the bat so gonna play around with that for a bit and see what happens
okay there we go the red liquid with the xanthan gum in it is now primed and it
is quite thick so it'll be interesting to see what happens it's still just
plain water that will start to get red as those drops come through but let's
just go with it let's see what happens so let's just have a little go I
definitely saw a collision on that one didn't capture it though so I might have
to adjust the delay once you've got xanthan gum in a solution as well
bubbles start to form and they really spoil the image I think so it was a good
idea between each shot to just clear the bubbles away from the surface so let's
just go with a few more and some see in the collision so I map captured a really
nice one there so we look about again yeah nice stem nice collision so just
keep fire in another one there yes I'm not quite getting the height that I want
so I'm going to start playing around to introduce or make the first drop a
little bit bigger which will make the water splash up a bit more getting it to
fill my frame
now I do like the miops drop system but I do have a couple of reservations that
I don't think you have with this part - the main one I think is the fact that
this nozzle is plastic it doesn't have the sharp edge of the metal nozzle on a
splash art - and because of that I feel like I'm losing accuracy I get a set
where I can see a water drop happening and then if something different happens
every single time now that does happen on the splash art - as well but the
consistency of the drops is is not as good with this and that's my big bug
bear really having said that I am still getting some collisions so it is still
working and it is cheaper than the splash car - as well so and I quite like
the setup with the tube it's quite easy to sort of set up and use and it does
work relatively well with the app but the app is my other bug bear because
although it works well the system does what really well it was easy to set up
you can have three or four drops as well which can just increase your levels of
creativity however not having that physical unit to control the walls drops
which I have on the splash art - just I feel like I'm losing a bit of that
ability to react instinctively almost so I've got to go into the app into the
menu change the drop size I change the delay whereas on this brush actually I
can just use the knobs without looking at it you know I feel I'm losing a bit
of speed but that's probably something that not most people are gonna be
bothered with I don't know and but I am still getting some results it's just
taking a little bit longer this is obviously my first go with this system
as well so I think it will improve as I become more familiar with it I'm
enjoying usually though it's just the same as any time you do was drop
photography can be frustrating but I do feel like that plastic nozzle is holding
me back if we could have a metal one I think I'd be really happy with it it's a
thing that would increase the level of consistency of the drops which is what
you need to then make the adjustments so I'm just gonna keep having to play
until I get a shot now I'm happy with and then we'll head back up to the
office to post process and image so after a water drop photography shoot one
of my favorite things is getting them back on the big screen because it's at
that point that you first get to feel the impact of what you have created now
on this occasion using the miles I just have not had the consistency that I'm
used to now all the time with water drop
photography I'm probably getting about 10% of my images this are somewhat
usable there is you shoot a lot of frames and don't get very much back in
return just because of the nature of the water and how it works and stuff but
today we can look down the screen here and there really isn't all that many
shots that are usable so I'm just gonna flag the ones that I feel are somewhat
usable it's just have a very brief look at them that one yeah it's pretty nice
not quite in focus maybe yeah I mean that's okay but you can see how when you
don't have the solution in the other the xanthan gum in there you get these drops
spraying off all over the place I think you lose a bit of the detail and the
overall symmetry and smoothness to it with that one I do like that one that's
quite an interesting one yeah that's quite nice this one is really
interesting but I don't like it going off the top of the screen that one's
okay I quite like that one is too close to the top of the frame that one's quite
interesting actually it's nice colors in that one I've edited
that a little bit but look at that bubble just for me that absolutely ruins
it it just pulls too much attention away from where I want your attention to be
which is on the wall to drop personally that's a deal breaker for me I quite
like that one but it's not quite right this one I think is probably the winner
so let's bring that up that's that's looking pretty good it's a nice shape
it's an interesting shape it's just not quite tall enough though that's the
thing I must prefer it when it fills the frame
and with the macro lens you can do that if you can get that drop to go up high
enough but we're just gonna crop it on this occasion
because it's still gonna work quite well and this would be similar if you are
using a kit lens or a 24 to 17 melons so let's just bring up the crop tool very
quickly and just get it down to something that's gonna fill the frame
something like that and that immediately looks really really nice in terms of
composition that's the sort of shot I want I'm just gonna drag it up from the
bottom because you can see the edge of the dish just a touch so I'm gonna crop
some of that out as well and that still looks really nice nice and clean nice
shape all around that's the kind of image that I love when it comes to water
drop photography all right let's go through it very quickly and make some
very quick adjustments now a top tip when you're editing any image if
particularly if you're in the rain or you have a bit of water around and
you're getting little spots on your lens they're very easy to take out with the
spot removal tool now you just hit the spot removal tool up here or you can hit
Q on your keyboard as a shortcut and sometimes they can be quite difficult to
see but if we're going for a little bit of perfection in our post-processing
all you need to do is take the da's slider and just pull it to 100% and that
what that does is allowing you to see the spots a lot easier so you like this
one up here now we can just really easily and really quickly get rid of all
of them I'm not might not get them all during this little bit couple of drops
there and yeah that doesn't look too bad one or two more just like that and there
we go right now all you need to do is just reset the D haze and there we go
nice clean image for you so now I'm just gonna make a few changes contrast boost
always works really really well and then we can just add a touch of clarity in as
well and then drag the highlights down just a touch shadows up a little bit
just to raise these black areas here I'm just going to drag the white balance
down a little bit here you've got so much control over your color with
wastrel photography I'm gonna give it a little vibrance boost a little
saturation boost as well hit hue and I just want to change that blue color a
little bit more not that way but I want to make it a little bit darker like that
then go to luminance on the blue and just bring the
brightness of that blue down a touch and that now looks really really good just
briefly on the image I would prefer it if this edge of this water drop was a
little bit smoother see these little notches here that's because the the
consistency of the actual liquid was not as thick as I would have liked but as I
was putting thicker and thicker liquid into the miops it was just it couldn't
handle it and I think it's because of that plastic nozzle if you imagine the
edge of a cup or a pan if you pour it out in the edge is really curved and
smooth you end up getting drips all over the place if you've got a sharp bit of
metal or something like that it comes out it's much easier to pour and that's
I think that's the same with this water dropper for the splash art see with this
metal sharp metal nozzle it seems to just work better with the thicker
liquids but I can't complain it's a nice image that's what I'm now going to print
so I'll just get that set up for a print every time I print my water drops I will
just add in a third of a stop or something of exposure to compensate for
the loss of backlight on the screen and that usually works out as a really nice
print so I'm gonna go ahead and print that and we'll take a look at that in a
second
here we go the print is done and I think that looks really and rather nice it's
always just so nice to see your images printed out and particularly water drop
photography because like I said earlier it's just like it's the sort of thing
that hardly anyone has seen before overall impressions of the miops splash
kits is this it's got some pros and some cons the pros are that it's a really
quite straightforward bit kit to use and it's also one of the cheapest on and now
probably the most well no splash kits on the market and you can produce some
really nice images with it the app also I think just a very simple redesign to
have all those controls just on a dial on a single screen so I can make fine
adjustments really quickly would make a huge world of difference so yeah over
armed I do enjoy the kit but I just like to see a couple little tweaks to it to
really make it as good as anything else on the market so that's my overall
impression of it I will put a link to it down below along with the kit that I
normally use to give you an opportunity to compare those two things if you're
considering making the purchase if you are going to buy the miops kit I would
recommend you buy it from Amazon because I bought it directly from my ops it was
slightly more expensive particularly for the cables I also ended up having to pay
import tax and that cost me about another 30 pounds or something so and
then also make sure you check out the raw room subscription to really get into
that water drop photography masterclass it's very different to anything I've put
on YouTube is - about two and a half hours of in-depth content there's about
nine chapters covering everything from how to make the solution and how to
shoot the shoot it with a very basic set of where you don't need any splash kids
and then also using the splash art - kids where we get right into it in
detail I think you will love it so if you head to the link down below check
out the raw rim for $5.99 a month you can subscribe you can cancel at any time
you have a full water drop photography to class landscape photography
masterclass and loads of other tutorials that I'm putting up all the time so
please do check it out if you want to know more also check out my other wall
strop videos if you've never seen them before and I'll see you on another video
very very soon I've got another one coming out on Tuesday actually which I'm
excited about this week and extra video for you so hope to see you then I'm Adam
this is first man photography out