On particularly cold winter days, you can freeze soap bubbles and make them look fantastic as delicate balls of ice.
Reading time approx. 3 minutes
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Location and preparation
On particularly cold winter days, you can freeze soap bubbles and create a fantastic display of delicate ice balls. Temperatures below -10 degrees Celsius and no wind are ideal. Fill a shot glass with either ready-to-use bubble liquid or washing-up liquid and water and add sugar syrup or dissolve some sugar (a teaspoon) in the liquid.
Use a straw to place the bubbles where you want them. This way you can control the size of the bubbles and place them precisely in the snow, for example.
Camera and lens
In principle, you can take pictures of frozen bubbles with almost any lens. The advantage of a macro lens is that you can get very close to the bubbles and easily crop out the background. A telephoto lens or kit lens zoomed to 55mm (for APS-C sensor cameras) or 135mm (full format) will also work.
Shooting mode “AV”
Select AV mode (aperture priority or shutter speed priority) when there is sufficient ambient light and exposure times are not too long. By choosing the aperture, you can not only change the range of focus, but also bring the sun into the picture in an impressive way. With a small aperture (e.g. 14, 16 or 22) you can see the sun in the picture. Exposure compensation in the minus direction gives a particularly dramatic look against the light. If it is too dark to shoot handheld at f/22, increase the ISO sensitivity or switch to manual mode M to set the shutter speed.
Caution: With a DSLR camera, do not look through the viewfinder for too long and do not look directly at the sun if it is shining directly into the camera. With a mirrorless camera, do not expose the sensor to direct sunlight for too long.
Autofocus and operating mode
Set the camera to One-shot autofocus and continuous shooting mode. If the bubble freezes, it often happens very quickly and you can choose from several pictures later.
Technical data for the header image:
Camera: EOS R5
Lens: RF 85mm F2.0 Macro IS STM
Aperture: F22
Shutter speed: 1/1600s
ISO sensitivity: 100
Temperature: -18 degrees Celsius
