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Water Flow Shots

I have been attempting to take shots of the water to capture the movement in a silky manner like so many beautiful pictures I see...but mine always end up so over exposed that all I get is a white picture with a small amount of detail.

What I am doing wrong?

Could someone please give me some advice on what is the best shutter speed and aperature settings for a shot like that?

Thanks
Nathalie

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Nathalie,
In order to get the water to appear as though it is a mist, you must shoot extremely slow, like say 1/25th of a second or slower. You should also set your ISO as low as it will go usually ISO 50 to 100. You should also shoot either early in the morning or late in the afternoon when the sun is not so high in the sky. By using these techniques you should be able to obtain the silkiness that you are looking for, but you must shoot a lot of images to get there too. The nice thing about digital is that it doesn't cost you any money to shoot many images, the way film does.

Look at this photo by Bluesky a very good photographer on Bytephoto. Also look at the shutter speed that he used to obtain this photo which was 1 second.
http://www.bytephoto.com/photopost/...=500&page=1

When you get something you like, post it on the contest site and then you will receive feedback on how to hone your craft too.

Good Luck!

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You'll run into Dave a bit Nathalie...especially if you want good advice...he's one of the good guys ;)

Good advice here, except that your D70's lowest ISO setting is 200...not that that is an issue, and should provide appropriate silkyness to the final image (i.e. no noise)

The idea of shooting later or earlier in the day is an excellent idea as the light itself can be very silky and aid the end result. Also there is less reflected light on the surface(s) of the water to interfere with, and blow out your image.

Also, don't forget you can buy special filters for the end of your lens, and you might have encountered them when shooting film. Primarily there's the Polariser type of filter, which are a brilliant way to cut the glare and or much of the reflection on water and even building shots. Investigate Circular types as they rotate to let you achive the best non reflective effect.

The key to excellent silky water shots is shutter speed. Shooting in Shutter Priority mode, lets you get on with composing the image, focussing, lighting etc whilst the cam chooses the best aperture for the job. Do this often enough and you'll start to pick why the cam chooses f8 for example and do this in manual mode.

As Dave's suggested, a slow shutter speed is vital. You can (and should) experiment, and I'd suggest starting at around 100 - 125th of a second to see if the water motion effect is desireable. If it is, then fantastic...if not, slow it further. It depends too on whether you're shooting, say a cascading waterfall or a slow or fast moving creek or river. All will require a totally different shutter speed for the effect desired. Of course the beauty of digital is as exactly as Dave's suggested, that you can delete and/or reshoot endlessly till you get it right.

Another option you might want to explore, is bracketing - (simultaneously hold the left BKT button and rotating the right command dial nearest your thumb) Doing this again turns the bracketing off. This allows you and your cam to shoot the same image 3 shots in a row, whilst in say Shutter Priority, (or any mode) and the cam will adjust the shutter speed for you over the 3 images, less and more than the setting in the display. That way you can compose something you like, and check out what the cam presents over the 3 images.

Aperture is a matter of personal preference...what you want to have in focus (and how much at one time) in your image. It's all about practice

Best tho to get some images in here for us to critique for you so we know what bits aren't desireable and what works well.

Good luck

Last edited by bytethis on Feb 20th, 2006 at 02:33 AM

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Thanks for the great feedback, I will use your information. As of right now the only photos I have are not worth uploading as they are soooo over exposed and I was shooting at 1.3 seconds...

I will continue to work on it and maybe soon will have something actually viewable to post for more help.

Thanks!
Nathalie

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