Action photography and a first attempt at playing with water droplets.

For a Christmas present I was given 2-rolls of Ektar ISO-100 film and since loading the first roll into my Pentax P30 SLR camera I've been carefully selecting my shots. Once the roll was finished I couldn't get to my local developers quickly enough and after having them returned to me on a CD I am very pleased with the result, so pleased I am probably going to be buying a bulk-load more of this awesome 35-mm film.

Other than rotating and cropping some of the images I haven't edited them in the slightest. My developer knows, even without my instructions, not to enhance or edit my prints, as this helps me know when I've made mistakes(and boy do I make some mistakes!). I've tried to make sure I gave a little more exposure to this roll of film, as many of my pics have shown under-exposure. I was given some great advice about setting my cameras ISO settings a notch lower than the film I'm using(If i'm using ISO-200 I set my camera to think I'm using ISO-150/100). Unfortunately, my Pentax P30 sets the ISO speed automatically and because of this I wasn't able to fool my camera. I tried my hardest to remember to expose my shots a little more but still think some of the shots below need a little more exposure. Nevertheless, my second roll of Ektar 100 will be loaded into my Olympus OM30 and this camera will allow me to attempt this trick.

Anyway, here are my latest pics and I hope you all enjoy the show :)

This was my first attempt at water droplet photography and to achieve these shots I coated a glass pane with wax and then used cotton buds to clean away some circles for the water to be held in. I have to say this was a tough technique to get right as the water droplets must be perfectly circular and of a certain size for the images to appear the way I needed them to. The other problem I encountered with this style of photography was the image being projected through the droplets. I found that small passport-photo sized images worked best. I'll most certainly keep trying to improve on this technique and hopefully my next attempt will be even better.