help, shooting waterfalls

[bfunk13]

I have tried and tried to get the "silky"

look of waterfalls or moving water.

I was fairly successful one time and have not been able to recreate what i did.

I have tried different shutter speeds and aperture settings. With little luck.

Most of my attempts turn out white. Way too much light. Ive read articles on this

and they say to only shoot in low light. Which i have tried. Ive seen photos

like this taken in fairly light conditions. What am i doing wrong?

Thanks for any help!

[joemikel1]

Maybe a nd (neutral density) filter should help. My favorite the ndx8 (8 times less light gets the lens). Hope to help

more than confuse :-)

[Charles_Webster]

Jose is correct. You need to use a neutral density filter, and your lowest ISO setting, to reduce the light so you can use a long enough exposure.

 

An exposure of 1/2 - 1 second will smooth out a small waterfall without making it "silky" A 3-5 second exposure makes turbulent water completely white and foamy.

 

I frame the picture and focus (manually) before installing the ND filter, because you can't see very well through the viewfinder once it's in place. A tripod is a necessity, a remote release is optional but handy.

 

<Chas>

[stemked]

Just to add to what's been stated:

 

1) You absolutely need a tripod.

 

2) Try mornings/evenings or cloudy days. Personally I like mornings better because there is also less wind (no foliage moving)

 

3) polarizers also reduce light. While they may not reduce as much as a ND filter, they have the added benefit of saturating colors on nearby foliage and reducing white out.

 

4) I usually try several times; as short as 0.5 seconds to as long as 15 seconds. The timing seems more dependent on how far the water falls and the amount of water in the fall.

 

In the good ol' days I used to use Velvia ASA 50 film.

[stemked]

PS. Watch carefully for hotspots that will blow out on long exposures

[2Oceans]

Brad,

For waterfalls shoot on over cast days, early morning or late afternoon to enjoy more diffuse lighting and to avoid background or foreground high lights from becoming a distraction. Spot meter the whitest part of the water fall and open up two stops exposing for that particular highlight. When composing I try to treat the shadows like an object if they are large and intrusive but otherwise I let the lesser shadows fall where they may. To obtain the lower shudder speed (around one half a second) use the lowest ISO on the camera, stop down to f11 or f16 and use a 4 stop (non-graduated) neutral density filter. A polarizer can be used instead. Additionally use a tripod, a remote, and a good tripod head locked down. I lock the mirror up to aid in rendering the static part of the scene as sharp as possible. Good hunting. Andy

[garydem]

to get silky waterfalls-you need a tripod. use a cable release or selftimer. do not go over f11.0 or you will run into diffraction distorsion. with that said, you need a shutter speed of 1/4second or slower to get the silky effect. even with the slowest iso the camera has it may not be enough to get those shutter speed and fstop combos. so you need to determine what strength ND filter is needed. if you can get to the waterfall ahead of time, find out what shutter and fstop combo you are getting in the lighting conditions you wish to use. from those settings determine how many stops of light you have to get rid of. that will be the strength of the ND filter. you can get the filters to 20 stops reduction if needed.

once you have the right filter, put it on, go to waterfall and take the picture.

[chrisalmerini]

To balance out some of the ideas listed...I have not used a ND filter (costly and still may not produce sharp enough images) to get the silky smooth effect- polarizer is a must becasue any 'reflective' spots on wet rocks needs to minimized. Tripod use becasue it will require long shutter times. Something not mentioned here is make sure you shooting in manual or aperture priority mode in the LOWEST ISO you have which will force shutter speeds to slow. AND probably the most important part- get there when the light is right. It will save you all that money you could spend on ND filters. There is no substitute for this- early morning or really late in the evening. I prefer early morning as in before sunrise and then be set up waiting for the least amount of light. Your camera will be able to adapt. Also remember rocks act like giant reflectors of light. Another key is to inlcude less of the sky above the waterfall since this area usually is full of bright light and will cause metering issues in your camera or the 'highlight blinkies'. Look around this site for photos and ask for what the camera settings were- should help too. Chris<div></div>

[pvp]

Good advice here. Others have already made all of the salient points I'd mention, but to recap:<P>

 

<blockquote>1. Tripod and cable release.<BR>

2. Overcast day. The best lighting IMO is "cloudy bright" where a thin layer of clouds prevents the sunlight

from forming definite shadows.<BR>

3. Meter the brightest part of the white water, open up 1 2/3 to 2 stops so as to place that white water in Zone

VII. The exact amount you need to open will depend on your film (or sensor) and how much overexposure it can

tolerate. The idea is to retain detail in the bright area that you metered.<BR>

4. Stop down as much as you can get away with; that will vary depending on the camera format. With 4x5, I often

stop down to f/45 without diffraction problems. With 35mm or APS sizes, f/16 or larger will be the limit. Use

ND filters or a polarizer to get longer exposures if necessary.</blockquote>

[Jeff Lear]

Here is a sample setting for you to use. This shot was before the sun hit this particular area and the image was cropped to remove the overexposed sunlit mountain and sky in the background.<div></div>

[larry h.]

Brad, you may wish to read through all the great advice I received in this thread five years ago. Most of it was very helpful to me. -- Larry

 

http://www.photo.net/nature-photography-forum/005dPt

 

PS--I have begun to like waterfall photos taken with relatively shorter shutter speeds (1/4s to 1/8s, unless they are extremely low flow) because shorter shutter speeds preserve more 'flavor' of the power of water. However, it is a very personal decision.

[jpo3136b]

Brad, if you're shooting black and white, one of the things you can do is to use an orange filter to accentuate the contrast

on the (most likely) wet, dark brown rocks. For negative processing, sometimes you can cut the development time a

little bit (30 seconds for those intervals of less than five minutes); this helps cut down on those overexposed spots that

came up because all of those water reflections moved past your negative. Another move would be to use variable

contrast printing to filter out some of the grays; this may help to break up the streaks from an all-white area into some

shades of white; it might help definition.

 

No matter what you do, you have to cut down on the light. It's because those shiny reflections are making too many

bright white trails on your negative.

 

If you are using digital, surely there are some kind of computer functions that you can use to mimic this. Maybe one of

the advanced digital guys can help you come up with some computer editing functions. Maybe the digital sensors

record more information about those highlights than they show; maybe there is some kind of way to mimic changing the

exposure on an enlargement so that you can start to bring out what would have been an out-of-range detail. Good luck.

J.

[jpo3136b]

When you're recording the water like this, you are actually photographing a reflection of the sun. Smooth, shiny surfaces

like this are a special case, when it comes to light metering.

 

When the sun or another bright light shines on: water, varnish, polished metal, glass or other mirrors, it helps to imagine

that the reflection is actually it own little incident light source.

 

It's just like pointing your camera at the sky to take a picture of the sunset, and including the sun. The bright sun

shining directly into your light meter can inflate the recommended calculations. That's why one of the posters above

recommended light metering a little to the side. Hope this helps. J.

[jpo3136b]

By the way, if you want to guess-close, in advance, how white or gray that sunlight mirror highlight, the reflections on the

water, are going to appear:

 

Look up. Light meter the sky directly overhead. Whatever the exposure value that tone is, that's what's going to go

directly into your negative.

 

I'm sorry I was so wordy. I got excited because I just developed 8 rolls of waterfall shots that I took over the past few

days. J.

[jpo3136b]

Brad, when I took my waterfall pictures, I was in a canyon 700 feet deep, one hour before sunset with an overcast sky. I

had to hurry up and take my photos and get out of there. I got drenched on the trail back out. I still got some strong

white sections in my long exposures of the waterfall.

 

I had exposures that lasted 8 and 15 seconds at a time. For one waterfall, I had a high volume of fast moving, splashing

water. Each water droplet acted as a mirror. But, the long exposure helped me to capture some side fans of low-volume

trickles that I thought made an interesting set of curves that complimented the main body.

 

On another waterfall, I had a low volume of slow moving, drizzling water. Each droplet acted as a mirror. On that day

again, I was in another section of the canyon, an hour before sunset, with partly cloudy skies this time. The drizzling

and the low-volume splashing helped me to record some of the misty sections, some of which appear as just a dark

cloudy area on the negative.

 

I've had another section of stream where there was almost no water, because there was a drought until a week ago in

that canyon, but I was able to get up close to a swift trickle. It was very shallow, only about an inch deep, but because

it was wide and flat and the bumpy rocks created variations in the surface of the water, the appearance of those mirrors

looked a lot like the bigger, higher volumes I saw as written above.

 

When you are recording pictures of water that use reflections of the sun as mirrors, it will be hard to convey depth or

volume. When you look at pictures of waterfalls, sometimes it is deceptive, the appearance of the amount of water

present. If you select shutter speeds that are over 1", tiny drizzles that are splashing can appear like bigger runs and

rivulets. If you have massive volumes of water going over an edge, like more than a bathtub's worth per second per

linear yard of the edge, then you will want faster shutter speeds. You will want the faster speeds (less than 1/60, but not

more than 1/2") because you will need to trap some shadows in among the mirrors of the reflected highlights in order to

give the waterfall body.

[jpo3136b]

"Without shadow, there is no form." -- Laura Gilpin.

[phule]

[[ive seen photos like this taken in fairly light conditions.]]

 

I'm assuming you mean that the examples of photos you've seen look like they were taken in bright conditions.

 

Of course the images look bright. When you lengthen the time your shutter is open, more light falls onto your recording medium thus brightening your image.

[mark_dijstelberge]

maby multiple exposure function....

 

http://forums.dpreview.com/forums/read.asp?forum=1005&message=27908470

[savagesax]

about a 1 second exposure<div></div>

[frank uhlig]

You need a sturdy canoe to shoot waterfalls ... And just start out with little ones ... And canoing practice makes perfect.

 

So is goes likewise with photography.Take a pic, look at result, see what you got, Criticize it. Think about what simple change

might make a change to a better one, Take another pic, etc. And search ph net with your desire; this has been asked and

answered more times that your days on earth ...

[Palouse]

An alternative method to the creamy look is to take 3-4 exposures on the same frame--modern DSLRs make this easy. This gives a staccato effect that is more realistic than a single high-speed shot. This was shot at with 3 exposures 1/200:

 

Another source of info is: http://www.ronbigelow.com/articles/articles.htm

Scroll down to the lower right for his 4-part series on waterfalls.<div></div>

[robertbody]

The exposure should probably be less that 0.5 seconds to get the waterfall effect. It depends on the flow of water, however, sometimes you need 2seconds or 8seconds. There will be too much light for that exposure, and that's why you need a light-blocking Neutral Density filter which allows only a fraction of light to get through. I like the 6 stop B+W filter which only lets in 1/64s and that allows for about 0.5second exposure in bright daylight at ISO-200 and f/16.. approximately. Without sun present, before sunrise the need might rise to 8second exposure with that filter, which might be too long in some cases, and that's when a circular polarizer will do, with a 2stop light reduction. More watefalls here... <a href="http://www.robertbody.com/arizona/havasu-falls/previews.html">Havasu Falls</a>

<br>

<img src="http://www.robertbody.com/arizona08/images/2008-04-04-hav-havasu-9932.jpg">

<br>

 

The above is a 0.5second exposure at f/16 with ISO-200 and with this filter:

<a href="http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/8087-REG/B_W_65066534_77_mm_106_Neutral.html">B+W 77 mm #106 Neutral Density (ND) 1.8 Glass Filter</a>

<br><br>

<img border=0 src="http://www.robertbody.com/arizona08/thumbnails/2008-04-18-hav-havasu-2795.jpg" alt="#5160: Late afternoon at Havasu Falls - 120 ft drop (37 meters) … April 2008 -- Havasu Falls!, Havasu Falls, Arizona">

<img border=0 src="http://www.robertbody.com/arizona08/thumbnails/2008-04-18-hav-havasu-2862.jpg" alt="#5164: Bottom of Havasu Falls - 120 ft drop (37 meters) … April 2008 -- Havasu Falls!, Havasu Falls, Arizona">

<img border=0 src="http://www.robertbody.com/arizona08/thumbnails/2008-04-18-hav-havasu-2884.jpg" alt="#5167: Havasu Falls - 120 ft drop (37 meters) … April 2008 -- Havasu Falls!, Havasu Falls, Arizona">

[robertbody]

<img src="http://www.robertbody.com/panoramic08/images/2008-05-18-hav-jump-co8454s.jpg">

Sometimes you can get away with just using a circular polarizer with a 2-stop light blocking effect and

'stopping-down' to a small aperture, but that is most true in dark areas of woods with really little amount of

light in my experience. In the open areas there might be too much light, or the waterfall smoothness is not quite

there. By looking the photo you took (and i always bracket) you can see if you got enough of smoothness...

sometimes at 1/4second i noticed there is a little more blur possible for the waterfall effect, and at 1/2second

it was perfect.

<br>

<img src="http://www.robertbody.com/panoramic08/images/2008-03-23-hav-beaver-5793sp.jpg">

<br>There is a link above to my filter... and it's $100 for a 77mm size... to be safe I carry it and a circular

polarizer too, but most of the time it's the "waterfall" filter i use, not the circular polarizer.

<br>

<img src="http://www.robertbody.com/panoramic08/images/2008-05-18-hav-mooney-8285s.jpg">

<br>

This picture above is a 4second exposure at f/11 at ISO-200 with the waterfall filter at 9am and 17mm with Nikon

D200.

[bfunk13]

Wow! You guys are great.

I didn't expect this kind of help.

I do use a tripod and the camera timer.

After reading about this subject, i ordered a polarizing

filter. I will try all of your suggestions next time i get out.

Thanks so much, Brad

[Stock-Photos]

Shoot after sunset if possible.

For the shot linked to below, I under-exposed by 1 and 1/2 stops to avoid loosing detail in the water. Then I brought up the shadows in PS and upped the saturation.:

 

http://www.photo.net/photo/5364462