Looks as if our civic center Fountain is covered in Saran Wrap???

I experimented with that today but it was a dismal failure on the fountain. Though on one hand the saran wrap look might be useful elsewhere some day.

I think I had too fast a shutter speed. Plus I want to OPEN the apeture as much as I can, right? I had a hard time remembering. Plus no tripod with me just hand held.

BTW, I was hoping for that softer look many people like in their moving water shots.

Here is an example:

HTTP response: 404 | MIME changed to 'text/html' | Byte size: ZERO

oh, geeze, was one of the reasons I had the thing set to f/29? d'oh!!!

brecklundin wrote in post #5749736
..... I think I had too fast a shutter speed. Plus I want to OPEN the apeture as much as I can, right? I had a hard time remembering. Plus no tripod with me just hand held.

BTW, I was hoping for that softer look many people like in their moving water shots........

Your shutter speed wasn't too fast, but your aperture was too small. For hand held, that was really good considering that the shutter speed was 1/6 second. The length of the exposure will depend considerably on how much water is flowing and how much of the white hazy look you want. I think that the best thing to do is experiment with different shutter speeds and apertures. Since you are wanting a shallow depth of field to blur the background, you are going to box yourself into very few exposure options. Personally, I think that if you take a long exposure to blur the water and then also want the background to be blurred, you are going to wind up with a completely blurry picture. It might be more pleasing to have everything in relatively sharp focus except for the water. This will give the viewer's eyes a visual reference to figure out what is going on in the scene.

brecklundin wrote in post #5749794
oh, geeze, was one of the reasons I had the thing set to f/29? d'oh!!!

Well, if it were a view camera, then f/29 would have been just fine. But, f/29 on an SLR is good for checking sensor dust in a sky shot ... I can't think of anything else.

Bill:

Thanks for the excellent explanation. I get it now about the relationship of the effect I was hoping for vs. shutter and aperture. I do have to admit to feeling significantly STOOPID when I realized I was at f/29...hahahaha...gawd​s, even I know that is mostly pointless. D'oh!!

One thing though given the type of lens used, the Sigma 10-20mm 4-5.6, not sure if I can get less DOF as I would like so maybe your suggestion of changing the focus point might help. Still if I find the right combination to get the soft effect with this amount of water the pretty much full DOF will help draw attention to the fountain? Yes? No? I need more medication?

I do appreciate your time, observations and suggestions.

BTW, I have been AMAZED at the image stabilization of this Sigma lens. I would NEVER be able to hold any shot at 1/6th and have it come out w/o the, as Sigma calls it, OS feature.

I think that if you try to resolve the Saran Wrap problem in isolation by considering only the shutter speed/aperture trade-offs, you may completely miss another obvious issue. The scene is badly over-exposed. There is no detail in large areas of the water sheets.
The only areas that look to be reasonably exposed are in the background foliage.

The first thing you need to do is decide how you are going to cope with the high dynamic range - it is right at the limit of what you can do without HDR tricks. I think it would be better to simply sacrifice some shadow detail in the background in order to better expose the highlight areas. The only other alternative I can see would be to take a different vantage point - one with a brighter background - and shoot it from there.Then, once you have the exposure issue under control, you can worry about trading off aperture, shutter speed and ISO to get the effects you want.

Bob,

Thanks so much for the tips! I will probably take some time this next week and try out the suggestions mentioned here. I have made my notes to take along in case I over look something again.

I can say your comments hit on something I noticed in myself today. I have grown LAZY over the past, almost, 10 years with my Sony DSC-S70 P&S. So, I really stopped thinking about a shot just that bit which can make a difference. What got me thinking about it was when I got home today after escaping to the beach, one of the flower pics I got had a great lady bug on on the petals. I completely missed this when I snapped the photo. That is what I mean, beside not really thinking about what I want the outcome to be, I am also not really focusing (excuse the quasi-pun) on the process of creating something interesting vs. just snapping pictures.

brecklundin wrote in post #5763260
Bob,

Thanks so much for the tips! I will probably take some time this next week and try out the suggestions mentioned here. I have made my notes to take along in case I over look something again.

I can say your comments hit on something I noticed in myself today. I have grown LAZY over the past, almost, 10 years with my Sony DSC-S70 P&S. So, I really stopped thinking about a shot just that bit which can make a difference. What got me thinking about it was when I got home today after escaping to the beach, one of the flower pics I got had a great lady bug on on the petals. I completely missed this when I snapped the photo. That is what I mean, beside not really thinking about what I want the outcome to be, I am also not really focusing (excuse the quasi-pun) on the process of creating something interesting vs. just snapping pictures.

Me too

That's why for me the "Decisive Moment" occurs when I am looking at the proof sheet

Hope you don't mind, but I had a bit of a play with your image. Just seeing how much I could balance everything out again.
_

HOSTED PHOTO
please log in to view hosted photos in full size.

LeuceDeuce wrote in post #5765413
Hope you don't mind, but I had a bit of a play with your image. Just seeing how much I could balance everything out again.
_

Very clever!

LeuceDeuce wrote in post #5765413
Hope you don't mind, but I had a bit of a play with your image. Just seeing how much I could balance everything out again.
_

Oh, goodness not at all...have at it...that is the whole point to see what I did wrong. It's been way too hot to go try and reshoot the pics this past few days, but around mid-week I should be able to try again.

BTW, if anyone wants the RAW (CR2) just ask and I'll send a link...you can hack away all you want then...