How to catch water crashing on rocks (long Exposure)

[jloyo001]

Hi guys, yesterday I tried to shoot in monterey bay water crashing on the shoreline... I wanted to do a long exposure of the water rushing in and colliding with the rocks but everytime I tried to shoot this I kept getting just white images, I stopped it down to between f14-20 and a slow shutter speed... It was during the day, but it was cloudy out, not too bright. Do I have to underexpose the images or something to get this effect right? I was trying to achieve the soft water look that some of you do well with waterfalls. Thanks in advance! :)

[tupper]

To get a long enough exposure to have the same effect as a waterfall during the day you will need a few ND filters.. Otherwise you just won't be able to expose the image right.

[chinoamigo]

either stack some ND filters or buy a strong one.. i believe a 10-stop ND filter would work in this situation.

[blackcap]

If you look at your exposure meter on the camera you'd see that your settings would result in a huge overexposure. Set it to Av mode, stop down to f/22, and see what the resulting shutter speed is. You won't be able to go much longer than that without adding ND filters to reduce the amount of light.

[bps]

And last but not least, keep your ISO as low as possible.

But honestly, for daytime shots, you'll need a Neutral-Density (ND) filter.

Bryan

[LarryD]

As others have said, you can't just guess at the proper exposure... At f-16, or f-22, and an ISO of 100, there will only be one proper shutter speed and you will know it if you meter on the water you want to capture.....

If you want to change that shutter speed (slow it down), you need to block the light........ that requires either an ND filter, or a polarizer.

But maybe you don't need to have as long an exposure as you think.... fast moving water such as waterfalls or crashing waves can be softened with faster speeds than slow moving bodies of water...

[PFDarkside]

If you have the opportunity, I'd set up ISO 100, AV, f16+ and see what you get. As Larry mentioned, crashing water might not need quite the lenghy exposure other types if water might need. Just enough blur to show motion, but still freezing that moving front of water...

[Mike-DT6]

As has already been mentioned, I think that you are probably using too long a shutter speed. It depends on what effect you are after, but from what you describe I think you will be needing a shutter speed of under a second, depending on how far you are from the water and how fast it is travelling.

At f/8 and ISO 100 I use anything between about 1/100th to around 0.8 of a second to get a nice effect from the movement of water. It does vary a lot depending on the factors mentioned previously though.

Mike

:-)

[jacobsen1]

can you post some samples?

there are a few issues here. The first is the camera won't see all the white the water ends up being in a long exposure. So you'll need either manual or to use +/- EV to get the right exposure. Shoot something normally, then adjust to keep from clipping the ends. But if you're getting "just white" as in not enough of the wave, you could be shooting TOO SLOW of a shutter speed. Try the ENTIRE range of shutter speeds until you get what you're after. Use your ISOs to get what you need at first until you know what 30 seconds looks like -vs- 10, 5, 2, 1 and then less than a second times (1/2~1/250th in steps). You may be overexposing, but you could also just be shooting longer than what you're after.