CD experimentation

Not content with inflicting sometthing of a well-worn theme of snowdrops yesterday, today I feel I must repeat myself. Weather and lighting crap ! Has to be an inside blip. Why not experiment some more with the polarised water droplets on CD theme ? Actually the polarised light is from the CD and the water droplest just reflect it and intensify the colour bands.

So an afternoon was spent experimenting with water droplets rolling about on the back of an unused CD. A bit profligate you might say but I am using a 4X recordable CD bought many moons ago. Remember those ! I wanted some irregular shaped water droplets so I decided to be quite radical and float the CD in a basin of water. Don't worry they automatically float to the top completely clean and dry. I managed to get my irregular shapes by literally splashing some wate onto the disc.

Then came the next stage of experimentation photographing the bubbles which I wanted and getting the polarisation right. What I learnt was as follows :-
1) The higher you are from the CD the greater the intensity of the polarisation. In order to get gthis distance you will probably have to use either a zoom lens or do as I did and use a long macro (100mm) with extension tubes.
2) Live View which I used extensively to check my focus does not always show the depth of colour that you will get in you final image. So try a few shots and see.
3) As you are shooting at an angle to the CD you may need to use focus-stacking to get everything pin sharp. For example the surface of the water droplet and the reflection inside it may need a slightly different focus. Similarly the water droplets may be at slightly different focal distances from your lens.
4) If you do need to dry your CD you will inevitably get scratches on it so be prepared to do some cloning out of the most intrusive scratches and spots.
5) Forget my mumbo jumbo and have a bash even if you cannot do all of the above, it is great fun !!