Macro Photography – Dew Drop Photography Tutorial

by Seeing in Macro · Published June 8, 2013 · Updated January 10, 2015

LordV’s Dew Drop Photography Photo

Dew drops are stunning subjects for macro photography. We are always mesmerized by dew drop photography. The reflections within each dew drop draws our attention and lures us into another world. In our opinion, this is one of the most beautiful subjects you can capture in macro photography.

We have been so impressed with the dew drop photos that have been shared on the Seeing In Macro Facebook fan page (www.facebook.com/seeinginmacro). In fact, seeing some of these photos brought back some of the memories of when we first attempted our very first dew drop photo. During that time, we had some failures… and we had some successes. Looking back now, our fascination with dew drop photography grew after we came across an online tutorial (many many years ago) by someone who we highly respect – a person with the online nickname of LordV (Brian).

Dew Drop Photography Tutorial by LordV

Thought I’d just put together a quick tutorial on how these are done.

You need to be shooting at around 2:1 to do them (100mm macro lens with 68mm of ext tubes is fine), although I’m normally shooting at about 3:1.

Need your camera rig , probably a dry mat ,a small daisy type flower about 2 to 3cms in diameter and a nice heavy early morning dew on your grass :). I use the camera in manual with ETTL flash manual focus, F10-F11 ,1/200th ISO200

Put the mat down carefully on the grass and kneel on it and try to spot an interesting dewdrop (smaller than about 2mm in diameter preferably) or group of dewdrops. Carefully place the flower about 2cms behind the drop in a vertical position and then find the dewdrop in the view finder.If you need to move the flower- remember it’s upside down when viewed through the dewdrop. The camera is normally resting on my hand as low to the ground as I can get it. Take several pics whilst moving the camera forward very slightly until you have covered the focus points of all the dewdrops themselves in good focus and also the refracted images in good focus.
You need to make sure you are keeping the FOV the same and do not rotate the camera whilst taking the shots.

You then need to focus stack the image…

Below are the three pics I used in a recent image and the last shot is the focus stacked version. Notice that the focus is only very slightly different in the pre-stacked shots.

Image 1

Image 2

Image 3

Focus stack of all 3 images
$Dewdrop flower refraction #2$

Brian V.

Dew drop photography is an art by itself. We hope that this tutorial has given you some ideas on what you can do with dew drops. If you feel motivated to try dew drop photography, make sure you let us know by LIKING this article. Don’t forget to share this tutorial with the rest of your friends and family as well!