A Flow on the rocks

[The Phototron]

So how do I take this shot with the blur in the water with a quick shutter setting? What settings should I use if I were to take this same shot again?

Try shooting during sunset/sunrise. You can't blur the flowing stream with a quick shutter speed.

 

[itskub]

theres dozens of reasons why this picture doesnt work. its not so simple as "faster shutter speed" or whatever. youll learn faster if you practice instead of posting some pictures and asking for help. i mean 2 weeks.. try giving it a year before asking for real critiques.

btw, overcast lighting happens to be my favorite. its not bad at all.

 

[nikonian2001]

you might try openinig up to F2.8 or lower if your lens will go there. That will help with the unpleasing background(ie. guard rail). as for maintaining the blur try investing in N/D or Nutral Density filters thay will block light out giving you that slower shutter speed that you were looking for. one last thing if you plan on geting shots like this you will have to work off a tripod.

 

[a5i736]

a5i736, you give all this harsh advice but i haven't seen any good pictures from you. no offense, but maybe encourage people rather then break them down and tell them how uninteresting their photos are. try to be nice sometime.

Well any time you want to see my portfolio PM me and I'll send some to you. Or you can go onto my profile and look up pictures i have posted in the past. Maybe I hanvn't posted pictures recently because I don't want pictures on here I don't fell are my best. Like this one! I don't feel this was there best shot, so they shouldt have posted it. Im sry but all Oi am is honest. I'll get on later tonight and post one of my own just for your plesure.

 

[a5i736]

You need to learn a lot more about photography before you become so judgemental, joey. a5i736 is taking the correct approach by giving an honest, straightforward critique. Encouragement comes from within. Don't expect it to come from elsewhere.

skieur

THANK YOU

 

[skieur]

So how do I take this shot with the blur in the water with a quick shutter setting? What settings should I use if I were to take this same shot again?

Why take this shot with blur in the water? Blur in the water was never meant to be the only way to take a photo of a waterfall or rapids. As a matter of fact, in many cases this method does not work very well at all. It can blow out highlights and result in a shot with less detail than what you see with your eyes.

All waterfalls and rapids are different with different natural lighting and different quantities of water going over. So don't be hesitant about trying a faster shutterspeed.

Metering needs to be careful too, so that you are not blowing out the whites or making the background too dark or dead in colour. Take a close look at the resulting image and use postprocessing and selective brightening to give the photo a greater range of tones and colours.

skieur

 

[meotter]

rather than shooting in manual mode, i'd shoot in shutter priority mode... this will automatically set your aperture correctly to an appropriate level.

experimenting is important when you first start shooting pictures... play with the settings and see what it gets you... tripods are your friend for longer exposures... hand holding for longer exposures is tough and impractical. if you don't have a tripod, try to steady the camera on another surface...

to get an idea of the settings, i'd probably try shooting in automatic mode first to see what settings the camera thinks is appropriate. from that point slow the shutter a bit and see what happens... i very rarely shoot in full manual mode, since there is generally little need for that. the automatic modes cover 95% of the shots i take. (automatic modes being shutter priority, aperture priority, of macro mode)

whilst this isn't a perfect foto by any stretch of the imagination, i think it shows some promise for your eye... just keep at it and don't be discouraged by overly negative reviews.

in this particular photo you can see the sky is blow out and the details are a bit blown out too... this means your exposure was too long and your aperture didn't compensate... (longer exposure means higher f-stop (aperture) to limit the light coming in)... camera shake is obviously a problem as well since a lot of the image is fuzzy.

something else you'll learn is that there are certain times of the day where the lighting is much harsher than other days. this looks like it was taken during a harsh time... the "magic" hours are dusk and dawn... objects in photos take on a very warm tone. obviously you can take excellent photos during any time of the day, but you need to adjust settings and sometimes use additional equipment to compensate (filters, flash, more sensitive lenses etc.)

hope this helps a bit, good luck with your new hobby of photography

 

[391615]

Cheers for the comments......

I'm going out tomorrow morning at the rise of the sun, try a few shots out, see what happens. I will try letting the camera chose some settings for me. as for Camera shake, yes I was holding for the 1/10 shutter rate, however I have a button called ops I think, and It says it fixes images that are taken with a shake. Forget the technical rubbish. What exactly is this function doing. I had it on for tripod shots at night, and my shots still were blurred. I'm thinking all it does is feather out the edges between different colours. I would rather not use this feature at all.

 

[Chris of Arabia]

...as for Camera shake, yes I was holding for the 1/10 shutter rate...

To be honest, having looked a couple of your shots now, I think this is where your main problem lies. You are trying to improve the sharpness of the shot from front to back, but losing any benefit by hand holding the camera. Simply put, use a tripod.

I'm not sure what the 'ops' setting is either, but then again we don't know what camera you're using, so it's difficult to assess what benefit it may offer. Whatever it is, it may not be appropriate to use it when the camera is on a tripod - if it is an anti-shake technology, all the ones I know specifically say you shouldn't use them on a tripod. But that's getting off the point a little.

Onto the shot itself, you are clearly seeking to use the waterfall/rapids as your main subject, so do exactly that. In this shot you don't need the sky visible and certainly not the armco barrier. Take a slightly higher viewpoint, angle the camera down a bit and perhaps zoom in a little. With the camera on a tripod, you then have the opportunity to experiment with your settings. Once you're set up and have the time, you could perhaps wait to see how lighting conditions develop over time.

Something else worth bearing in mind is that digtal sensors do have a tendency to lack some contrast. I normally expect to have to do something about that in post processing.

Hope that helps.

 

[skieur]

Cheers for the comments......

I'm going out tomorrow morning at the rise of the sun, try a few shots out, see what happens. I will try letting the camera chose some settings for me. as for Camera shake, yes I was holding for the 1/10 shutter rate, however I have a button called ops I think, and It says it fixes images that are taken with a shake. Forget the technical rubbish. What exactly is this function doing. I had it on for tripod shots at night, and my shots still were blurred. I'm thinking all it does is feather out the edges between different colours. I would rather not use this feature at all.

For your info., you are supposed to turn off ops (stabilization) when you are using a tripod. The degree of stabilization also varies with make and camera. This may mean that 1/10 of a second was still too slow for the stabilization to work well.

skieur