Most buckets are shaped like a truncated cone, so with a steady eye one should be able to fill a bucket to exactly half (2.15 or 2.35 liters). However, in this puzzle, this little trick doesn't help and the shortest solution is indeed 44 steps.

How does being shaped like a cone frustum help?? Even if the bucket were a cylinder (so filling it to half height got you half the volume), that would be crazy difficult. With slanted sides, how could you possibly know how high to fill for half the volume? Did you bring a protractor? Sextant?