Monday, April 6, 2009

Watery Wednesday: Kent Falls Experiment

I've been playing a lot with my camera lately. I'm a girl that until recently, has been happy to point and shoot on the automatic setting and not venture into the world of aperture and shutter speeds. It is only very recently that my curiosity has been peaked by technique, so after talking with a friend about how he gets those great captures of waterfalls, I decided to check it out.
The top shot is based on the effect I saw in my friend's picture that I wanted to learn how to capture. While it's not perfect, I'm learning. This was accomplished by setting my camera to Ap Prority AE, the shutter speed was 1/10 and the aperture was set at 32 with an ISO of 1600.
The bottom shot is taken with a more natural setting in mind. I took this picture last fall and again tried to stay away from the automatic settings. This one was taken with a shutter speed of 1/200, an aperture value of 6.2 and an ISO of 400. This picture was a happy accident. Both pictures are captured at the same vantage point at Kent Falls. I am still learning what all this means, but it is very interesting. The lovely thing about landscape shots is you can always go back and try again.
to see more great Watery Wednesday shots from around the world, please visit http://waterywednesday.blogspot.com/




14 comments:

Margaret's Ramblings said...

I don't know which I like best, they are both beautiful. My camera is still a mystrey to me.

Margaret

Gill - That British Woman said...

I'm with Margaret, they both look lovely in different ways......

Gill in Canada

Unknown said...

Wow, either way they are great captures. Maybe I like the first one most because of the clarity of the water foams.

Bryan said...

Good to see you experimenting, Laurie! Wow, 1/10s , f/32, and ISO 1600? Those settings may be why the photo is dark, but I like the result because the water is very well defined. In many of my photos, my water ends up too overexposed, leaving me with blown highlights in the more frothy areas. With your top photo though, I can see the water clearly everywhere, and it looks so wonderfully soft. Great captures! I look forward to seeing more!

Martha Z said...

Good post. It's interesting to see the different effect one can get by changing the shutter speed.
I like the first one best.

Guy D said...

That is simply beautiful, great work.

Hope your having a great week!
Guy
Regina In Pictures

Unknown said...

i still discover something amazing about my camera everyday.:D love the first photo.

Anonymous said...

With digital, all things are possible.
Both your shots have their special quality. I prefer the faster exposure one myself. Nice.

Mojo said...

And the great thing about waterfalls is that there's an almost infinite variety of ways to shoot them! Wonderful job on both shots. Keep up the good work!

2sweetnsaxy said...

I'm learning to play with the other settings of my camera too AFTER I get a good shot the regular way. LOL! I hate missing a shot.

To answer your question about my shot: The flowers in the last photo are camelias. There was a camelia tree on the edge of stream and the camelias had fallen from the tree into the water. I'm sure the bottom petals are under the water though one of them is floating on the water. It was taken with the zoom feature on my camera from across the stream.

Anonymous said...

I like the sunlight in the 2nd shot but I just love the water in the 1st one - I want to learn how to do that too, but I'll have to get a new camera in order to do that!!!

EG CameraGirl said...

Thanks for the tip! I'm not sure which version I like best but it sure is nice to know more than one way to take a photo. Besides, I LIKE to experiment. ;-)

SandyCarlson said...

Nice, Laurie!

Ebie said...

Those 2 shots are a beauty. Still a newbie to SLR, maybe I should take some classes at the community college. I will write down the tips.