Materials
A black helium balloon filed with water.
A black background.
A background stand.
Some black invisiline rope.
A Katana.

Procedure
Hang the balloon from the second background stand setup.
From here you must perform the first Iai waza/kata. The first waza is a basic draw (nukitsuke) and cut (kirioroshi) from the lower left to the upper right (temple) followed by chiburi and noto (cleaning and returning the blade). For more information on the wonderful world of Iaido please visit the Japanese Cultural Arts Center.

Result
This shot turned out rather nicely. My cut was horrible, but the shot is pretty. It is most interesting if one compares the previous shot to this one and notices the similarities of the effect the blade has on the movement of the water. In both cases we see a clear deviation of the water caused by the blade. Even in this case where the blade penetrates no more than a half of an inch (it should have penetrated 3/4″). The shutter speed has reduced the motion blur sufficiently enough to allow all of this to be quite clear. I am awfully fond of this camera. Speaking of, I will be posting the review of this camera around the middle of this week.

Lighting
For this shot I decided on a backlight for the water. In this case it is the sun. This allows for nice, clear viewing of the droplets without an overly bright highlight.