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How to get that lovely flow of water..(slow exposure in othe
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in other words…..
I tried it one day messing about I didn’t have a tripod mind you but each time I tried I overexposed, what gives. I thought it was slow shutter speed and f32 or something to allow less light in but each time it way over exposed.
I know I should never do this without a tripod obviously but as I say it was a spur of the moment experiment.
What am I missing??Cheers
John
Hi John,
in general water falling or in a fast moving stream starts to blur nicely around 1/10 of a second or slower. As you get longer than a second or so the same water starts to look like plastic.
Specific shutter speeds which freeze or blur movement are very much determined by the speed of the subject itself. Slow shutter speeds are also harder to get in bright light (one of the reasons landscape photographers prefer early mornings or late afternoons/evenings)
As a general recommendation I’d suggest making sure your ISO is at its lowest number (usually 100) and not Auto. Then I’d suggest putting the camera into Aperture Priority mode (“Av” on Canons, “A” on most other cameras). Now dial in the biggest aperture number (just as you did when you got f32). The benefit of using Aperture Priority mode (as opposed to Manual or Shutter Priority mode) is that it’s much harder to get an over- or under-exposed shot as the camera will usually be able to balance the exposure with the correct shutter speed.
For variety change the Apertures to see what effect different shutter speeds have on the water,
Dave
And if the above doesn’t get you a long enough shuter speed, than add a neutral density [grey] filter — they
are available in several strengths.You can also use a polarising filter — they have about a 2 stop exposure increase.
a tripod is pretty much essential for this. i always use Aperture mode, usually smaller than f8, depending on the light. if its fairly bright you might need to go down to f32 or whatever your minimum aperture is, this however will result in a slower shutter speed. ND filters are another way of doing this, they will also result in slower shutter speeds, while letting you use a wider aperture. its a bit of a balancing act.
I think one of the hardest things when doing this is to get the balance between exposing the water correctly and also exposing for the surroundings (beach or riverside) which are invariably very dark.
I’m still waiting on some ND filters to give this a proper experiment, but I’d say there’s a lot of trial an error on top of the advice from others above.
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