Slow Shutter Speed for Flowing Water

Argghhh - I don't know how long it is going to take me to get this stuff into my head. Drove up to the mountains last Sunday with my son. We stopped to picnic at this little spot beside the road. Before we left, I thought I'd get a photo. The Joe Pye Weed was blooming beside this pretty little mountain stream and I love Joe Pye Weed because it is one of the few things blooming this late in the summer. It was a little overcast making the conditions right for a water shot here. I love photos making water look like it is flowing rather than frozen in action. You can't make these shots in bright sun light because you have to be able to slow the shutter speed down enough to make the water look all soft and yet not let the white caps get over exposed. When you slow the shutter speed down it lets more light into the camera therefore easy to over expose the shot.

I got out my tripod and framed the shot. I set my aperture as small as it would go. This would let in less light and I wanted to have a large depth of field anyway. I took the shot and it didn't work. The shutter speed was still too fast. I tried a couple more and then remembered I had to adjust the ISO. It had been on auto. Even then I couldn't get the shutter speed low enough. See the photo to the right. Yuck!

I get back in the car and my son asked if I got the shot I wanted. Noooo! I was doing something wrong, but what? 3 minutes down the road it hit me! I had been turning the ISO up instead of down. I had been thinking so much lately about speeding the shutter speed up in order to NOT take a blurry picture that when I WANTED a blurry picture, what did I do? I turned it up! In turning it up I was causing a faster shutter speed instead of the slower one I needed. I had taken the photo at F22 with an ISO of 1600 which made the shutter speed 1/30 - the slowest I could get it without over exposing the shot. While 1/30th of a second is slow it was not slow enough to get the nice fluffy water I was hoping for.


About a minute later I saw this other spot and pulled over and made the shot again this time cranking down my ISO instead of up. This was shot at F22 with an ISO of 100 at 1/6. This is much better. See how the water looks like it is flowing rather than frozen in place? This is more what your eye sees when looking at a mountain stream. With more shade it would have slowed the shutter speed down even more and been awesome.

Below is one I took a few months ago. It was shot at F22 with an ISO of 200 at 4 seconds. It is probably a bit too slow, but I love the effect and the feeling it gives. The spot where I took this was so shady there wasn't any sunlight being let in by the trees. This is what I wanted!