Fiber Fool

Of course I didn’t take just broad landscape shots when were in Rocky Mountain National Park. That was mostly what I took as I was still trying to get my shutter speed and aperture priority mode legs under me so I didn’t get overly creative. I had set a goal for myself that for the remainder of Amber’s visit after our class I would not use any of the specialty scene modes (macro, portrait, landscape, action etc.) but instead use only shutter or aperture priority and if I was feeling really brave full manual. This was a huge thing for me as I have become the master of scenic mode manipulation. I know which mode to use for certain photographic effects even if the actual shots are not of the “scenes” the modes are made for.

One of the best things to photograph when learning about shutter speed is waterfalls. The photo at the top of the page used a fairly slow shutter speed of 0.1 seconds or 1/10. The photo just above used a very fast shutter speed of 1/1250. Notice how in the top photo the water is blurred? Much more water moves through the framed shot in 1/10 of a second than it does in 1/1250 of a second. In class we learned a handy little guideline — 4 digits will stop most action free of blur, 3 digits may stop some action, 2 digits almost certainly will blur and single digits moving over into actual seconds will. That was a handy “rule” to know when shooting something like waterfalls. It is also a good rule for knowing when to pull out the tripod - especially if you do not have image stabilization in your camera and/or lens.

Above is another pair of shots. The first had a slower shutter speed of 1/10 and the second of 1/500. Notice how the “stopped” image of this pair is not as stopped as the larger one shared before. Well, this one was 3-digit so it was likely some blur would occur and indeed it did. In general, when it comes to water I think I much prefer either well-blurred or well-froze. The in between does not appeal to me as much.

While the broad landscape shots of yesterday’s post and the zoo shots in Monday’s post made me wish for a circular polarizer, taking these waterfall shots at nearly high noon made me wish for a neutral density filter. I couldn’t get any really drastic shots of the water blurred because I couldn’t stop down my aperture enough to get proper exposure and my desired shutter speed. But neutral density filters can stop down the light getting through to your sensor by 2-3 stops and it does not change your white balance or color. The shot above was the longest shutter speed I was able to actually capture in that bright, high altitude light and it was only 1/8. That’s not to say I didn’t try :-) I have several all white frames to prove I didn’t listen to what the numbers in my viewfinder were telling me, LOL!