first attempts at water, rip them apart please

[nirvana84]

Hi all, this is my first atempt of taking pictures of waterfalls and moving water on my olympus E-510, just after a few tips so please give me back some constructive criticism. the hardest thing i found was not overexposing the sky while having a long shutter speed. i used a polarising filter for all shots and a tripod for the first and last pictures and for the rest i had to use a steady hand. here are the settings i used of each picture all in manual mode iso 100.

picture 1

14mm, 1/2 sec, f22

picture 2

14mm 0.62 sec f16

picture 3

14 mm 1/5 sec f16

picture 4

14 mm 1/2 sec f8

picture 5

14mm 1/2 sec f14

thanks in advance for any advice,

Craig

[GB1]

Craig,

Waterfalls are fun to shoot. Sometimes they work out and sometimes not though. Polarizers are great to reduce light and hence slow down your SS, but I think you might need a graduated ND filter to balance out the sky and foreground in tricky situations like this. Just to warn you though - I've used a grad ND filter and STILL gotten skies pretty close to this.. why, I am not sure. Could be that I did something wrong, or that the ND filter isn't quite the miracle filter it's cracked up to be, or ...??

Concerning the shots, # 1 is my clear preference. It has context and tells a story. The sky is distracting but remember that you can adjust this in PP. PS has a graduated ND filter equivalent that you should look into. The other shots are more experiments to me, # 2 being the best, though you needed someone at the bottom swimming there and looking up at the fall to complete it.

Hope this helps. It's been about 2 years since I've shot a waterfall

G

[brmill26]

I like the scene in the last one the best. The wood on the right frames the river nicely, and the dreamy look of the water is nice. However, the light is just dead. Photos without good light are rarely worth much. So I'd say shoot the same scene again but with some light filtering through the trees.

#1 is the best of the rest. The only thing I'd add to GB1's comment is that horizon is tilted, so be sure to rotate it in PS.

#3 is much too dark.

#4 definitely has some pretty bad camera shake to it, which makes it any automatic throwaway IMO. I think you have a good idea with that composure, but you need a wider lens to get more of the water fall.

All of the shots look a little soft to me save the last one. I'm not sure if that's due to the resizing program, the lens, or something else. You definitely have some good ideas here though.

[Greg McCary]

Even with the IS on the 510 you are going to do much better with a tripod with shutter speeds slow enough for falls. Falls work better on cloudy days when the lighting is better with no heavy shadows. Or at best very early or late, the golden hour. The polarizer was a great idea suggested by GB1. It will cut the glare and help slow the speeds.

[icicle]

I like the first one the best.
the second one was a little too dark.
the third one way too dark
How ever it is a great shot on the darker side.
the forth and fifth ones needed more detail.

Just my two cents.