Most of the waterdrop macros that you see are actually created through a technique called focus stacking. Focus stacking can be used to increase the available depth of field in a particular shot. For instance, if one is shooting dewdrops on blades of grass which are separated by a few centimeters, it is impossible to have everything in focus, even at apertures like f/32. To get everything in focus, you would capture two or more images, and then combine the two with a program called Combine ZM. For instance, if you look at this image, you'd notice that the focus is on the dewdrop on the left, and the other two dewdrops (as well as the blade of grass) are out of focus. In this image, the focus is on the other two dewdrops. Finally, in this image, the focus is on the blade of grass. To get the final image, one would combine the three images (by focus stacking), and the impressive result is seen here. To see a tutorial of Combine ZM, check out Brian's tutorial page on flickr.
Brian Valentine recommends shooting at about 2:1 (though he shoots at 3:1). To get this magnification, one needs some extension tubes added to their 1:1 macro lens (I shoot with the Canon 100 mm macro, which has a 1:1 magnification). Brian shoots at f/10 to f/11 aperture, and uses ETTL flash manual focus, shooting at 1/200 seconds.
To see more of Brian's work, check out his smugmug page and his flickr page. Pretty incredible pictures!
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