Which of these two shots work best?

rickabobaloey · Jul 21, 2011

This first one had a shutter speed of 1/4, an f/11 aperture, and ISO 800.

Muskegeon Rocks by cpt_gungho, on Flickr

This second one was done with a shutter speed of 2, an f/13 aperture, and ISO 800.

Muskegeon Rocks by cpt_gungho, on Flickr

marmots · Jul 21, 2011

the first is better

the second just looks like mist

possibly try to go even longer, but definitely back up

mickmac · Jul 21, 2011

Depends on which one you like the look of most. I'm not that keen on either. Mainly because I think this sort of shot has been done to death.

tirediron · Jul 21, 2011

Hard to say which one is 'best' as they're two distinctly different shots due to the great difference in shutter-speed. I think that an even longer shutter-speed (say 6-8 seconds) might have been the way to go with this. Of the two, if I was going to display one or enter one in a contest, it would be #1.

rickabobaloey · Jul 21, 2011

Thanks for the replies everyone!

This was out on a pier and these rocks were surrounding the bottom, not much room to backup as I was looking down from the top of said pier. These were also taken with my 18-55mm lens, maybe if I switched to my 55-250mm lens I'd be able to zoom closer from shoreline and get a capture of the water crashing against the side of the pier, perhaps?

If I were to go with a slower shutter speed of 6-8 seconds I'd most likely need to go to a lower f/stop, say in the 20's or 30's, and possibly a higher ISO, right?

tirediron · Jul 22, 2011

No, drop your ISO down. the lower the ISO, the less sensitive to light the camera's sensor becomes (and the better the quality of the image). If you're shooting at 1 second with an ISO of 800, dropping your ISO to 200 will allow you to increase your shutter-speed to 4 seconds. You can increase your aperture to reduce the amount of light coming in as well. Another option is acquire neutral density filters which are grey filters that block a certain percentage of light, but have no other effect on the image.