this whole silky water thing..

S

Slipperman

Senior Member
why can't i do this? i went out today and took some pics specifically to see if i could achieve the silky water effect on a sprinkler at a local park but it didn't turn out too well. i know you have to use a slower shutter speed in order to capture the movement of the water but i wasn't sure about the aperture. so what i did was set bracketing mode on at 0.7 of a stop, set shooting mode to Manual and the starting shutter speed and aperture to 1/30, f22 respectively. took 3 pics where the bracketing created exposures of 1/30 f22, 1/50 f22 and 1/20 f22. i then increased the aperture to f25 and took 3 more pics at 1/30 f25, 1/50 f25 and 1/20 f25. took 3 more using f29 before changing the shutter speed to 1/25 and repeating the process (using slower and slower shutter speeds). this yielded a total of 45 exposures none of which came out right. maybe it was the way the water was spraying out of the sprinkler that didn't allow much 'mist' but not sure.
anyway, here are 2 pics - one from the first set and one from the last..

ISO 100
55mm
1/20, f22
+0.7EV

Berlin_ 003_2000.jpg

1/13, f29
0EV

Berlin_ 043_2000.jpg
 
O

oldsalt

Senior Member
Try a neutral density - "ND" - filter to get a really slow shutter speed and you may get the effect you are after... good luck with it.
cheers
 
S

Slipperman

Senior Member
short of getting a filter (which i don't have), isn't there a way of doing this naturally? that is what if i redid the whole process above but with a starting shutter of 1/13 and go slower from there with maybe a greater EV on the bracketing (my 5100 can go into whole numbers for shutter - 1" and greater)?
 
Last edited:
Kias

Kias

Senior Member
A tripod and night(ish) time would be your best friend in your situation without an ND filter. The darker it is, the longer your exposure can be, the silkier the water will look.
 
Kias

Kias

Senior Member
You're still working in fractions of a second for the shutter speed. You're going to want to work in seconds to achieve the look you want. It's either a filter, or night time. I'd go with night, I love the night.
 
W

WhiteLight

Senior Member
A few i'd taken a long time back...
Had no ND filter (and hardly any photographic skill too :p) & it was shot mid-day.
I had a tripod, so the best i could do was to shoot at f/22 and the longest i could get was 1 sec.

dsc-wlp-001-3.jpg


dsc-wlp-001-2.jpg


dsc-wlp-001-15.jpg


dsc-wlp-001-4.jpg
 
D

Don Kuykendall_RIP

RIP :(
WhiteLight said:
A few i'd taken a long time back...
Had no ND filter (and hardly any photographic skill too :p) & it was shot mid-day.
I had a tripod, so the best i could do was to shoot at f/22 and the longest i could get was 1 sec.
Click to expand...

But even at 1 second you get the effect. Those look good. What would be really interesting is to see you shoot this area now and see what you would do different.
 
M

Mfrankfort

Senior Member
Amazing pictures. To answer your question...something slower than 1/20. You want the water to flow.. and you have to give it time to flow. But those waterfall pictures are amazing. Especially that one of the hotel?
 
S

Slipperman

Senior Member
well attempts to do this 'naturally' were a miserable failure. all the shots came out way overexposed. looks like i'll have to get that grad filter.
 
J

jwstl

Senior Member
480sparky said:
You need to shoot when it's darker still then.

And a grad filter won't help.... you need an ND filter.
Click to expand...

Exactly. There are ND filters and Graduated ND filters. Graduated filters only lower the exposure for a portion of the image and are typically used to bring the exposure of skies etc. closer to the same exposure of the landscape. Non-Graduated ND filters lower the exposure for the entire image and are useful for situations like this.
 
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