To capture water in mid splash can be very challenging, but some special features of my Olympus OMD EM1 Mark 2 made this job a lot easier.

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Strawberry Splash

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^{Please click on the image to view full screen!}

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Category	Still life
Settings	1/3200 sec | f/2.8 | ISO 1250 | 60mm
Camera	Olympus OMD EM1 Mark 2
Lens	Olympus 60mm f/2.8 Macro
Location	My living room

There are two special features in the camera that I used, but before I explain, the first thing you will need is lots of static light. This technique does not include the use of flash and a bright sunny day outdoors should do the trick if you don't have very bright indoor static lighting.

If you look closely at the image you will see that some of the splash is very slightly out of focus. This is because I was forced to use a fast aperture of f/2.8 due to my static lighting not being as bright as I would like. F/8 will work better and would be ideal if you do have enough light. I could have increased my ISO but at 1250 I did not want to introduce any more noise than I could deal with in post. A very high shutter speed is required to freeze the motion of the water, so I didn't have the luxury of being able to slow the shutter to increase the light reaching the sensor.

The Olympus OMD EM1 Mark 2 is capable of shooting up to 60 fps (Frames Per Second) which is amazing and ridiculous and when I first heard about it I thought "who's going to need this and what for?" Well this image is one answer to that question. The other feature is "Pro Capture".

"Pro Capture" is a shooting mode that will start recording images to the buffer as soon as the shutter button is half pressed. Once fully pressed a number of images are sent to the SD Card that were recorded immediately before the full press.

There is a limit to the amount of shots recorded, so you don't inadvertently fill up your SD Card. You can set these variables in the camera settings. E.g. Max fps = 60, Pre-Shutter Frames = 30, Frame Count Limiter = 99. With these settings, you will get half a second and 30 frames before fully pressing the shutter and a further 69 frames once the shutter is fully pressed. Here's what the settings look like in the camera's menu system.

For the "Strawberry Splash" shot, I placed my camera on a tripod and held a remote shutter release in my left hand with the button half pressed. I held the strawberry directly above the glass with my right hand. I then dropped the strawberry and fully pressed the shutter at the same time. Later I had a total of 99 frames and picked out the best one as the keeper.

This combination of fast frame rates and "Pro Capture" opens up a world of possibilities and I guess there are many applications. Wildlife is the first one that comes to mind but there's one thing I nearly forgot to mention. The camera will not be able to re-focus between shots at 60 fps so there are two "Pro Capture" modes, Low and High. High is for up to 60 fps and low for up to 18 fps which will allow focusing between shots. I've had mixed results and find that 10 fps in "Pro Capture" mode works well with wildlife and is enough fps. I do very little wildlife (although writing this may inspire me to do more) but here's a shot I grabbed by spending 5 or 10 minutes aiming my camera at two birds on a rooftop. I would never have got that exact moment without these features.

If you have any questions, I'll be happy to answer or if you would like to leave a comment, it will be gratefully received.

Thanks for reading

Richee

Website https://www.richeewilson.com/
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