Silky Water Effect in Photos

[Hae-Yu]

Many people have seen the effect of making water flow like silk in photos. Recreating it another matter. Online and many books will tell you that you need to increase shutter speed. The longer the shutter stays open, the more blurred the water and the more pronounced the effect. Obviously to run a longer shutter speed, it's implied that you need a tripod.

That, however, is only 2/3 of the trick and they always leave out the most important thing. What happens when you leave a shutter open for long times in daylight? You've overexposed the image, or at least the most important parts, and it's just too bright.

The part I just figured out was that you need a neutral density filter. Go to cokin.com or adoroma.com or tiffen.com to look up pictures of them. ND filters are solid gray (neutral) filters that decrease the light coming into the camera allowing the camera to stay open longer without overexposing the image. They are neutral, meaning they don't effect the color. Various darker grays reduce light by 1, 2, 3, or 4 stops.

You might need to bump the EV value 1 step (+/- .5) to make up for the reflections screwing with the exposure compensation.

You might get away with it in a shady area, pre-dawn, or dusk lighting conditions, but I haven't had one turn out yet out of literally hundreds of images of waterfalls and rapids. I just bought some filters and we'll see how they turn out.

[Sammie]

great info ultra.

I've been considering purchasing an infrared lense. I've used infrared 35mm film but have not messed around with it in years and never on the digital side.

That is one thing that bugs me about digital. I can control apature and fstop but i cant control my film type/speed or maybe I just dont understand my camera well enough.

I was more serious with my 35mm as far as learning it. I would take tons of test negatives and keep track of my settings per shot so I could learn what settings produced the best results under different lighting situations or the result I was after.
I have not done that much work with my digital. But I suppose that is mostly due to the fact that I dont have as much time as I did back then and I also didnt have a computer to alter pictures with. I had to produce a decent negative since the only other control I had was in the dark room. And thats a one time shot. Screw something up and there is no "edit..undo.." option.

I should get out sometime next week and take some shots. The days are finally getting longer to allow some extra time after work.
I neglect my camera too much.

[Hae-Yu]

i cant control my film type/speed or maybe I just dont understand my camera well enough
No ISO setting? Maybe it's just buried in the menus.

I take tons of pictures and change the settings, but I'm too lazy to keep track of them. Last week I tried to get an evening shot of Primm, NV and I used 1 shot at each combination of shutter speed from 1/2 sec to 10 secs, each aperture from f3.? to f8, and each ISO from 80-400. Like 96 pictures I think. I don't think any turned out well, but it was windy which screwed the longer exposures.

I know high ISO for nights & speed, slow shutter for nights, adjust fstop up/adjust shutter speed down. I understand how they all inter-relate mentally, but putting it into practice is another story and I don't know much about how to best use them.

One thing I do is to take mental notes as I drive around of what looks good at what time. I may not be able to shoot then, but maybe sometime in the future I can make a run to shoot that particular object.

Why infrared? I know they create those ghostly images. If you specialize in IR photography, maybe you can perfect it. On my Olympus camera news groups/ user forums, they specifically discuss whether each Oly's sensor can work in the infrared spectrum. May want to look up those user groups for your Nikon.