How to photograph rain?

T

The Matt

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A site I go on is having a contest themed around rain (just a wet scene isn't enough). If this afternoon has taught me anything, it is that light rain is very hard to photograph, but since I have little better to do this week, I am determined to get something good.

I don't have a CP filter so reflections are proving problematic if I try to photograph ripples on the pond. I have tried setting up on a tripod near a pint glass full of water and have managed to capture a splash as a drop hits the surface, but the shot is horrendously noisy as I had to up the ISO to get the short shutter speed... I am considering trying some backlighting with an LED torch to illuminate some drops in the air, but if that fails, I'm more or less out of ideas.

Does anyone have any tips or ideas?
 
I can't help you all that much, but I saw some really nice shots of rain falling onto flowers on here not too long ago..... a few posts in it was confessed that it was actually straight from a watering can, but I'm reasonably sure no-one could tell the difference! And that way you can vary how hard the 'rain' ;) is!
 
Why don't you try using a hosepipe with the nozzle set to fine spray then try to back light it or use the sun (yes, I know that's in short supply at the moment!) ;-) Or as Inaneredstripe said use the flash to freeze it! :)
 
I would say it's quite hard to get 'natural' rain on camera, but I did get some in a few of my mountain bike shots at a recent event, but that said, it was raining quite hard, and it still didn't show up that much in the pic. And that was using 2 flashes.

They even struggle with film cameras. Rain that you see in movies, soaps etc. is usually coming from a sprinkler (well I dunno what you'd call it:thinking:) up above.

I'd say flash was the way to go though, and it'd be a good challenge (y)
 
Kerioak said:
Ladylens and I both managed to get falling rain at the horse show we shot the other week - as did some of the others who were shooting horses that weekend ;)
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Well I only said QUITE hard :LOL:

Here's my rain, and as I say, it was pretty heavy...

SDAAe16.jpg
 
Matt, have you got a flash gun? You could try what you've already described, but instead of using the torch, use the flash, fired several times while the camera is on a slow shutter (and low ISO). :shrug:
 
Thanks for the suggestions. I don't have a flash gun but I'll see what i can get with the built in flash.
 
how about bouncing rain of the floor or some other structure/object, you could do some test shots from the spray of an hose pipe try shooting against a dark background (y) may even get a rainbow as a bonus
 
i got this one at Croft earlier this year in a down poar

SJW_6829.jpg


check the exif for details if it helps at all
 
Oli R C said:
They even struggle with film cameras. Rain that you see in movies, soaps etc. is usually coming from a sprinkler (well I dunno what you'd call it:thinking:) up above.
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Or if it's black and white film... milk. Yes, singing in the milk. :)
 
Tripod, back or side light. Enough shutter to more or less freeze the drops, but not quite....because if you have a slight too slow shutter to freeze the drops they burn a longer trace onto the film (or chip) - so you get long rain drops that stand out better.

If you use the flash on your camera, you will get snow, not rain.
 
Get a nice flower/bowl of fruit etc. Put it outside a clean window. Get a hosepipe/watering can and someone to pour it down the window and take a shot using TV mode and various shutterspeeds.
 
This was done in torrential rain. I used manual focus to keep on the players rather than the rain itself so no reason to not do the same in reverse to get the rain in focus.

2732989119_7dfc109ec2_o.jpg
 
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