Photographing rain means freezing the motion at a certain speed. At what point does it look most like rain? The following images are taken with no wind, but a steady rain was present. At very slow speeds up until around 1/40, the rain tends to blur into a mist. Looking at the images from 1/40 to 1/100, the rain appears more like streaks. After this point, the streaks become shorter and shorter until at 1/1600, mostly raindrops appear.

Having shared this with several friends, the conclusion was summed up by Rob as follows: “1/40 and 1/100 seconds are the most appealing to me. Below 1/40, it’s hard to distinguish rain from mist, and above 1/100, the rain looks more like dirty streaks/spots on a window than like rain. I suppose that might be because we never actually see rain as individual drops frozen in mid-air in the real world.”