• 12-15-2008, 03:10 PM
    JoshD
    Shooting a "blurred" waterfall
    What is the technique here? I am starting to figure out some of these controls, and basically I think what I want is a wide aperture and slow shutter speed? Is that correct? I know there is a fine line though between making the water itself look blurred, and making the entire picture look blurred. Do I focus on the center of the water itself? Or the surroundings? What's the secret to blurred water and sharp surroundings?

    Any tips?

    Thanks
  • 12-15-2008, 03:16 PM
    zrfraser
    Re: Shooting a "blurred" waterfall
    A tripod, long shutter, wide aperture, and a ND filter will help. With the wide aperture you are going to be bringing in a lot of light, which could mean you may not be able to get a slow enough shutter speed. Think of an ND filter as sunglasses for your lens. What I always did was set my self timer and used a slow shutter speed. This meant I didn't have to actually trip the shutter and cause a bump to ruin the photo. I would also focus on the water it self, and not the surroundings.
  • 12-15-2008, 03:25 PM
    A.M.D.A.
    Re: Shooting a "blurred" waterfall
    That's good advice from zrfraser! :thumbsup:

    • Use a small (or medium) aperture value and shutter-speeds ranging roughly from 1/2 second to 1/100 second. If you get over-exposed images, then an ND filter or a polarizer will come in handy for reducing the amount of light entering the lens. You can increase the aperture if the available light is low, but your goal is to obtain slower shutter-speeds – smaller apertures aid with this.

    • Since slow shutter-speeds are going to be used, employ a tripod. Cable releases work great for avoiding hand-jiggle when the picture is taken, but I find the 2-second self-timer to be just as good. Focus on the water.

    • Try out different shutter-speeds to find out which one is most effective, the slower – the more amount of blur, the faster – the less amount of blur.

    Hope this helps. :)
  • 12-15-2008, 03:41 PM
    brmill26
    Re: Shooting a "blurred" waterfall
    You've got the right instinct, Josh. As Alex said, you'll probably need a medium to small aperture (high number) in order to block enough light to get the shutter speeds slow enough. No need to worry about the ND filter business at this point (I don't own one) - just close the aperture down as far as you need to.

    The blur you see is caused by the motion of the water, while the surroundings are sharp because they aren't moving. The same is true for anything you photograph with a slow shutter speed - if it's moving, depending on how fast it's going, it will cause more or less blur at different shutter speeds. For instance, at 1/60 a person walking will have a slight blur. At 1/500, you can stop a runner mid-stride. And if you leave the shutter open for 15 mins at night, the motion of the earth spinning is enough to blur the stars and create "star trails."

    So for the waterfall in question, I agree about 1/60 is an ideal place to start. You'll find that will likely give you a nice blurred look, but still some good detail. If you slow the shutter down further, say 1/5 second (or slower), the water will take on more and more of a silky, wispy look. On the other hand, the faster you go, the more you will "freeze" the motion of the water, such that if you get fast enough (probably 1/400 or higher) you'll start to freeze individual splash droplets in mid air. Waterfalls are an excellent subject to experiment with different shutter speeds and see the results, so you can really learn a lot from this.

    Back to the blurred look, a tripod is absolutely required for this - and you should have one any way. Grab one for $20 from Walmart if you don't have one; I did and it's lasted me 3 years so far. And then just put the camera on it and use the self timer - press the shutter button, then keep your hands off the camera/tripod until it fires. That way you won't have any unwanted motion shake that would blur the entire photo. Then come back here and show us what you got!
  • 12-15-2008, 05:13 PM
    Wild Wassa
    Re: Shooting a "blurred" waterfall
    Shooting any waterfall whether it is a small cascade or a long drop can be a tricky exercise.

    You will need to take into account the volume of water coming over the falls; this will determine the time of the exposure that best allows the retention of highlight detail while giving adequate shadow detail and the degree of movement that you want ... consistent with your aperture giving good depth of field.

    If I wasn't focissing on something specific, I would put the point of sharpest focus 1/3rd of the way into the total depth of field, if an extended depth of field is required. This is called focussing on the hyperfocal distance. The hyperfocal distance is a point 1/3rd of the way into the zone that remains in acceptable focus. Non of my new Canon lenses have depth of field scales, which proves most awkward at times. With my old Canon lenses I'd set the focus distance to 1/3rd of the way into the depth of field scale ... now I just guess.

    If the water volume is large or moving quickly, short a times like 1/2 a second to 1 second shutter speeds might be all that is needed.

    If the falls are just a trickle, 10+ seconds still might not be adequate ... also waterfalls, often have differing types of flows happening. So a compromised time might be needed.

    Here are 3 images that I have in my scraps folder. If I return to these creeks, I'll have a starting point to improve on. I used a polar filter max'd right down on these shots and shot them all at 100 ISO. Just recently I've purchased an 8x neutral density filter to go under the polar filter as my Canon is limited to 100 ISO minimum.

    I chose three waterfall shots that nearly worked, but didn't. They are interesting because they didn't. They are all a bit muddy in values.

    Little flow (below), with different speeds of flow, needed a relatively long exposure ... 12-15 seconds (if I remember correctly) and still the rocks were way under exposed. This flow over a wet coal seam was always going to be difficult to record good tonal values because of the high contrast range.


    http://i225.photobucket.com/albums/d...CoalSeamIV.png


    A relatively fast turbulent flow, in an anfractuous cascading creek, where a 2-3 second exposure was far too long (again if I remember correctly). The problem with this exposure, taken under a leaden sky, was that an adequate exposure was needed to avoid black voids in the shadows but grossly over exposed the highlight detail in the water. Bad lighting conditions that day ... did not a good cascading waterfall make. Hazy bright light would have been just perfect rather than heavy overcast. I knew the shot wasn't going to work well and be technically unsalable, but I like this image. An image certainly worth reshooting for the retail detail in the water.


    http://i225.photobucket.com/albums/d...SnowyRiver.png


    A biger flow only needed 3 - 4 seconds exposure. This recorded good amounts of detail but the black voids are not cool in landscape images.


    http://i225.photobucket.com/albums/d...ersFalls-1.png


    Now that I have Lightroom 2.2, I might try salvaging these images. All three were made when I first got into digital and I was a bit at sea with the editing programmes. Two creaks are close to home and not difficult to reshoot.

    I see now that I should have taken many exposures at the time and made HDRs of each. A moving detail HDR of a waterfall might be very interesting.

    Warren.
  • 12-15-2008, 07:59 PM
    Wild Wassa
    Re: Shooting a "blurred" waterfall
    I'd like to tell you my famous waterfall story.

    The #1 natural tourist attraction in our district was a farm stay resort with very impressive falls, all on private property.

    A tourist with a camera who climbed over a guard rail 2 years ago to improve his angle of view, contrary to the signage, when the falls were still open to the public, slipped and fell to his death 160 feet below. The falls then became a serious no go area ... like a prosecution is guaranteed for trespassing if caught, type of no go area.

    Last year when it rained (which doesn't happen often here), I wanted to see the falls flowing, so I rang the property owner. He said he feared being sued because he had not maintained the paths adequately and he couldn't now get adequate liability insurance, so visiting the falls was a no go area for everyone even those staying in the resort. This sad tale, did not dissuade me one iota.

    I parked 3 k's back from the now locked-off falls tourist car park and headed stealthily through the bush and across open paddocks keeping to the depressions and erosion gullies to get to the falls, it was still raining. Lack of visibility remained on my side. When I got to the falls, I set up a shot of the top of the falls and not thinking took a trial exposure ... and the flash went off.

    Within moments, maybe only a minute and a half, a 4WD with 4 shouting guys in it and another 4 shouting guys on trail bikes came and surrounded me, or where I had just been. When the flash went off, I knew I was in deep poo because the main windows of the resort and the resort's kitchen windows overlook the falls. Obviously someone had to have seen the flash. I immediately relocated.

    Being well versed in stealth and wearing my camos (premeditated crime is the term), and with my camoed tripod, when I heard them and glimpsed them coming through the trees, I immediately relocated about 50 metres, that is all I had time to do. I lay on the ground and didn't move for the next 4 hours. They searched for me for 4 hours close to the falls, sometimes within visual range not noticing me and on a few occasions only feet away on the trail bikes. The police then soon arrived maybe 20 minutes after the flash went off. In two squad cars and joined the search.

    When they changed to searching the paddocks, I followed them lying in inch deep depressions and short grass and keeping away from the erosion gullies and elevated ridge lines. Another two 2 police cars were about a kilometre back up the road for incase I bolted. By sundown, they knew I was still somewhere on the property. By this stage search light were being used. It was getting dark.

    It was 7 hours before I made it back to the car and they were still searching for me. I could see the search lights and the bikes cresting the hill and ridges and searching the gullies, from time to time ... 7 hours of the best adrenalin rush ever (one might say). Don't ever let anyone tell you that playing Ghost Recon Advanced War Fighter 2 or Operation Flashpoint in multiplayer isn't good for one's continued health and longevity in photography.

    ... and the only shot that I took was ordinary, of the unnamed falls.


    http://i225.photobucket.com/albums/d...ameFalls-1.png


    Warren.
  • 12-15-2008, 08:20 PM
    PRB
    Re: Shooting a "blurred" waterfall
    Warren --- who gives a flying fig what the picture looks like --- that story ROCKS. :yesnod:
  • 12-15-2008, 08:47 PM
    dizzy
    Re: Shooting a "blurred" waterfall
    Yikes!

    The only advice I was going to add to the above is think about your metering. If you're photographing a scene with a large area of moving water (which is white) the camera will get confused and try to even the whole scene out to grey. Not good when you're trying to keep the water white! If you're shooting in either Aperature or Shutter priority then dial in around half a stop of exposure compensation (play around to get the right setting). If you're working in manual then just put in your settings so the camera is telling you that the image will be overexposed.

    Also, get a polarizing filter on as this will help to clear reflections from the water and see all the detail of rocks etc in the water. Have fun and try not to go near Warren's waterfall!
  • 12-15-2008, 08:58 PM
    Wild Wassa
    Re: Shooting a "blurred" waterfall
    Penny, I can smile at this past adventure now.

    Warren.