How to Photograph Waterfalls - A comprehensive Photography Tutorial

hi guys and welcome to this week's video have you ever wondered how photographers take pictures of waterfalls that look like this [Music] well if you have then this video is for you before we crack on during this video as well i also want to give you information on how you can be a recipient of my trusty eye footage tripod all that coming up [Music] [Music] [Music] i get asked quite often how i manipulate water how we change the properties of water through photography so i thought i'd put together this video for you i'm making i'm going to make it very apparent fashion right from the setup right from the start up right from the equipment that you need all the way through to really a little bit of advanced knowledge that you're going to need to learn to be able to manipulate water falling from well anything really but let's just talk about waterfalls for the sake of this video first things first we need a very sturdy tripod i didn't say expensive it doesn't need to be expensive but it needs to be a very sturdy tripod next we need a camera without stating obvious pretty much any camera will do as long as you have a camera whereby we can change the shutter speed that is important so basically any digital slr camera will do so that's the tripod taking care of that's the camera taken care of next is filters so we need to be able to add neutral density filters onto the front of your lens they don't need to be expensive once once again but we need to be able to add neutral density filters onto the front of the lens and finally we also need a timer or an intervalometer plugged into your camera unless of course your camera has a timer intervalometer already built in so before we throw ourselves into setting the camera up i'm assuming if you're watching this video now that you'll have a basic understanding of how to shoot your camera in manual mode if not i'll try and explain it as we go along anyway because i'll i'll set my camera up in a very basic way and even if you don't know how to shoot your camera in manual then maybe you will after watching this tutorial but the most important thing is is i'm assuming you also have an understanding or a basic understanding of your exposure triangle again if you don't i'll try my best to explain that throughout this tutorial as well so before we do anything it's really important that we get our composition right there's no point just turning up and just photographing water well there is if you're playing around of course but most important thing is obviously to set the scene up having said that i'm not going to do that because i i want this tutorial to be all about how your camera can change the properties of water how you could change the properties of water through photography so i'm just going to zoom in to the water because that's really the most important thing about this tutorial so let's have a quick look on the back of my camera now then so so the first thing i'm going to do is go through my normal procedure set it up i'm gonna make sure i'm nice and level the camera needs to be nice and level i'm shooting water there's a horizon involved there so without stating the obvious it needs to be level okay that's done let's now set our camera up just like we would do if we were taking a landscape shot for instance the iso is the first thing i'm going to adjust let's go down to our base iso iso 100 sometimes i go lower sometimes i'll opt for iso 50 but for the purpose of this exercise iso 100 next is my aperture normally when you're shooting landscapes you're going to be shooting at f 8 or f 11. so let's just set our camera up to f11 so now all i need to do is adjust the shutter speed to allow more time for light to hit my sensor this is exactly the same way setting up for any shot in manual especially landscapes so all i'm going to do now is look at my histogram and slow my shutter speed down and as you can see with the histogram as i'm slowing my shutter speed down slowing my shutter speed down and slowing my shutter speed down the more i slow my shutter speed down the more light falls onto the sensor therefore the histogram if you didn't know will now venture to the right what we're trying to avoid though is if the histogram moves all the way to the right hand side and hits the side then that means we have lost or lost information in the file so we need to make sure as much as we want the image nice and bright we do not want that histogram touching the right hand side it's really really important so now i'm going to increase my shutter speed to bring that histogram back and all i'm looking for is to keep going keep going and keep going and keep going until my histogram if you could see here is no longer touching the side on the right hand side a very small tip i'll give you here as well when we start taking really long exposures you'll tend to find that you can very quickly over expose the water even if the histogram is saying that it's not going to be overexposed so my advice to you in that instance would be slowly under expose your really long exposure shots but all that will become clear as this tutorial continues i'm pretty much happy with that i like that so in this light i've now got iso 100 i'm shooting at f11 and i'm currently sat at an eighth of a second so next what i'm going to do is let's focus let's focus i'm going to choose a dark and light area so there's a lot of contrast right on that waterfall it's even gonna zoom in just double check and make sure i'm right on that waterfall back button focus is perfect for this by the way uh a manual focus is as well in actual fact now i've got my focus right i'm gonna switch my focus onto manual that way throughout the whole of this tutorial now i don't need to worry about trying to focus and then refocus and then with my timer i'm just simply going to press my button click and there is my image f11 iso 100 and an eighth of a second so let's just take a look at this picture and see what we've achieved so far let's bring that picture up there more importantly let's zoom right in and let's look around this waterfall there let's take a good close look now every time i take pictures of waterfalls i always have a preference when it comes to shutter speed but my preference is around about the sixth of a second shutter speed and the reason why i like sixth of a second to roughly half a second and the reason why i like those shutter speeds is because you can still see definition in the water but also there's a blur so you get that lovely that milky effect with the water but you can still see the streaks of water the definition of the water and waterfall is still apparent in the image and i really like that however this is really down to personal choice once you know how to manipulate your camera's shutter speed to get the best then really play around with it you know because i'll take the same shot if i love this particular shot for instance i'll take my shot at a sixth of a second and a half a second because they're my favorite shutter speeds but then i'll also manipulate the shot as well and you know i'll shoot this at 30 seconds i'll shoot this but maybe a minute or two which is what we're going to come on to in a minute and then later on i'll make a decision of what or which one i prefer so now let's delve in and play around with these shutter speeds and let's alter how the water will appear on our images for instance i'm going to slow the shutter speed down the more i can slow that shutter speed down the more milky the water effect will be whilst it's falling over the waterfall so to do that you need a basic understanding of your aperture triangle and what i mean by that is we could slow the shutter speed down sure enough and that will have an effect on how the water will appear in our image because your shutter speed controls movement but of course as you slow your shutter speed down more light will appear on your sensor and because more more light appears on your sensor then we have to combat that by doing one of two things either desensitizing or demagnetizing your iso if it's possible or closing the aperture up or adding neutral density filters onto the front of the lens we'll come on to those in a second so let's just keep it very basic to begin with i'm going to slow my shutter speed down what i'm going to do is slow my shutter speed down by one stop it's very important to know what one stop of light actually equates to but it's it's much easier to work in stocks of light basically a stop of light is half or double any one of the three elements iso shutter speed or aperture if you doubled or half any one of the three that equates to one stop of light your camera will likely be set up in increments of thirds as well i'd only confuse you but what i mean by that is if i want to slow my shutter speed down by one stop three thirds equals a hole so three clicks of my shutter speed will equate to one stop watch i'm gonna slow my shutter speed down one two three and what i've now done is i've slowed my shutter speed down by one stop so to compensate for that i now have to either half of my iso or half the size of the aperture to compensate for the twice as long length of time that the shutter speed stays open even if you don't know or understand all that as long as you click click click your shutter speed and then click click click your aperture in the opposite direction they will always equate to the same so f11 at the moment remember your camera settings are set in increments of third so i'm now going to close my aperture one stop it'll take you from f11 to f16 which is one stop one two three now as long as i've slowed my shutter speed down by three clicks close the hole by three clicks the light falling onto the center will be exactly the same but of course the properties of the image will change dramatically let's take that picture but now as you can see the properties of the image has changed dramatically from f11 to f16 well your aperture controls your depth of field so increasing the number increases the depth of field which means the properties aren't really going to change that much everything's going to be in focus at f11 anyway as long as you focus pretty much a third of the way into the frame everything will be rendered in focus or in this instance we're actually just focusing on the waterfall so everything will be in focus so the properties of f11 to f16 will change but the properties that we're definitely concerned about which is our shutter speed will definitely change because now we've gone from a sixth of a second to a quarter of a second and if you look at that image there i'm going to zoom in really really close to that waters edge there and you can see if we make a comparison between one and the other there is a huge difference a huge difference and the most important thing to draw from this is there's no right and wrong as long as you set your camera up right this is down to personal taste do you like it or do you not like it now we've got a grip of that we're just now going to play around between the settings of our iso aperture and shutter speed let's make it simple for you again let's let's do that again watch i'm gonna slow my shutter speed down again by another stop slowing it down three thirds one two three i'm now at half a second that's one stop of light more to compensate i'm going to make the aperture size smaller by one stop which is three clicks of my aperture it's gonna go from f16 to f22 one two f 22 the light hit in the center is exactly the same exactly the same but the properties of the image will be very very different just take that shot go let's take a look at that picture we've just shot there at half a second let's zoom right in again let's look at that water area there now you can see that's really really milky there's a lot of a lot of milkiness in that water shower we say but we've also lost a lot of definition if i go back to the picture previously you can see there's much more definition in the water and then go back again and you can see just between those three there it's a massive difference a massive difference and that in a nutshell in a very basic manner is how you manipulate your shutter speed it's really really easy you can also do this in shutter speed priority but if you're doing shutter speed priority then you're not really in control of your aperture you're not really in control of your iso and you're very limited with what you could do that's why it's always better to learn it in manual and we're going to need to to shoot in manual in a second anyway because we haven't started adding neutral density filters which we're going to do in a second my camera i can adjust my iso down even further i can desensitize or demagnify it from iso 100 down to iso 50. so i'm going to do that to push that shutter speed a bit more watch currently i'm at half a second remember we haven't added any filters to the camera lens or anything let's carry on so shutter speed one two three i've now slowed it all the way down to one second the aperture in this lens will only allow me to go to f22 so therefore i can't make the hole any smaller i'm stuck with f22 by the way i wouldn't recommend photographing an f22 ordinarily but for the purpose of this exercise just to get you guys to understand what i'm doing so let's go back to let's chat a bit there from a half a second click one two three remember i've now doubled the length of time the shutter speed stays open from half a second to one second which equates to one stop again i now have one stop's worth of light extra falling onto my sensor so to combat that i'm now going to change my iso from 100 to 50 100 to 50. there you go the properties will be exactly the same with the exception of how the water looks because it's moving relative to the shutter speed that is now set at one second let's take that picture and see how that looks fantastic i love that love love love it let's zoom in right into that water let's have a quick look there you go that's one second half a second a quarter of a second and an eighth of a second there's a massive difference between how they look and we we're able to do that without adding any filters or complicating it any further i love that that's really really nice but also you can manipulate water the opposite way so let me explain let's go back to our base figure our base figure when we first added was iso 100 we were at f11 and i was at an eighth of a second i think i was there right perfect back to my original settings of iso 100 f 11 and an eighth of a second but what we're now going to do is we're now going to manipulate the shutter speed in the opposite way maybe you don't like that milky effect maybe you want to freeze the water because that's such a good thing to do well we're going to work in the same principle but work the other way around in other words i'm now going to increase my shutter speed so watch one two three i've now doubled the speed of my shutter but that's now going to make the image darker by one stop so we compensate therefore by either doubling the iso or making the hole the aperture twice as big so from f11 for instance i could open the aperture up to f8 watch three clicks one two three everything is three clicks one way and three clicks the other way and now i can shoot that at 15th of a second and let's carry on i'm going to increase my shutter speed again one two three let's open my aperture further one two three five point six and take the picture i'm now at a 30th of a second let's go one stage further but now we're getting to a point whereby well we don't really want to open that aperture up any further otherwise we'll end up with a really really shallow depth of field and maybe you want that maybe you don't want that but if you're going to adjust your aperture like this you must be aware that your aperture controls your depth of field so what i'm now going to do is double my shutter speed one two three so now we've gone from 30th to 60th of a second but now i'm going to compensate by doubling my iso one two three i've now taken my iso from 100 to 200. so now i've made the sensor much more reactive to light or i've magnified the light by or twice as much shall we say and let's take that picture so simple let's do the same thing again one two three so from 60 to 125th and now i'm going to double my iso to compensate at 400 and take another picture so easy it is all it takes is a little bit of practice same thing one two three and let's increase that iso one two three again bear in mind that now as much as i'm at 250th of a second my aperture is f 5.6 i don't really want a smaller number otherwise that will equate to a smaller depth of field and do i really want a higher iso than iso 800 probably not otherwise we'll start to introduce noise on to the image so in these lighting conditions unless i really want to push my camera that's pretty much where i want to stop where i'm comfortable at for 250 of a second 5.6 at iso 800 and that water if i zoom in there will be really frozen yeah really really cool look at that and that's a far cry from that to uh was it a second i think was there the longest we managed our shutter speed open that's a simple exercise turn up set your camera up into manual set your camera up in the normal way the way that you would when you take pictures of landscapes for instance and then just simply manipulate your shutter speed your aperture and your iso until you get the desired results and if you want to push it even more by adding filters then we'll talk about that next [Music] this is the fun part a lot of people turn off at this point because they think it's too complicated and it really isn't these are a lot easier to set up than you think so what i'm going to do is let's get back to our base figures again in other words iso down to 100 f 11 is where i prefer to be let's adjust our shutter speed like we did earlier until we're happy with our current settings an eighth of a second i like that an eighth of a second is brilliant the tip i will give you is make sure you are focused in before you add your 10 stop filter if you use back button focus doesn't really matter or if you focus in manual then you don't have to worry about it in my instance i focus and then turn the lens into manual and it's all the same but make sure you get your bass settings right first now all i'm going to do is simply add my ten stop filter onto the front of the lens like so very easy so now i need to determine what shutter speed an eighth of a second will equate to now that i've added a 10 stop filter and i recommend doing that by downloading and installing if you don't already have it on your phones ali big stopper or 10 stopper app because it's really easy to use and it's free so even if you don't use lead filters definitely recommend downloading their app so what i'm going to do now is simply tell the lee stopper what stopper i'm using which is a 10 stopper and i'm also going to tell it what shutter speed i'm currently at i'm currently at an eighth of a second and as you can see there that's now telling me that the correct exposure is two minutes we now need to achieve a two minute exposure like most cameras my camera will only go down to a 30 second exposure therefore if i want to extend that shutter speed longer than 30 seconds then i have to set my camera to bulk mode luckily for me on my camera i have on my dial here b for bold mode so i'm just going to select bolt mode if you can't find bulb mode on your camera then what i suggest you do is simply slow your shutter speed down and down and down as far as it can go and the chances are when it's slowed down beyond the 30 seconds then bulb mode will probably appear if you didn't know bold mode in your camera it's a bit of a weird setting but it's the only setting within your camera that doesn't have a predetermined length of time for the shutter speed to stay open in other words the shutter speed will stay open for as long as i keep my finger on the trigger it really is that simple and that's where a timer intervalometer will really come in useful again if you've got an intervalometer built into your camera then that's perfectly fine let's just double check the settings now i'm in bulb mode make sure my camera is set to f11 and it is make sure my iso is set to 100 so now the shutter speed is controlled by my timer so all i'm going to do now is to set my timer to two minutes and press start a two minute exposure is now being taken sit back and relax three two one and two minutes that's our two minute exposure fully done let's have a quick look at that fantastic my lead filter will offer a very slight blue hue to that but don't worry as long as you shoot your images and save them in raw that's something you can correct in post-production there you go and if we look at that picture now fantastic really really like that and now that we've done that because we know now and understand how the exposure triangle works we can now manipulate this two minutes if we think the two minutes is too long just by doing a simple maths equation at the moment then we are at f 11. iso 100 at a two minute exposure so let's say we wanted a one minute exposure instead of a two minute exposure well that means the shutter speed is going to be open half as long one minute to two minutes is half as long that means we're going to lose one stop of light to compensate that we're either going to double our iso or double the size of the hole so therefore i could in terms of light capture exactly the same image if i shot this at f eight and one minute had a cow play then so f11 two minutes is exactly the same as f8 but it's a bigger hole at one minute is exactly the same as 30 seconds at 5.6 or instead of opening and closing your aperture you could increase and decrease your iso to compensate in exactly the same way so it's always just pitting one off against another and that really is how you expose your triangle works [Music] simple [Music] [Music] [Music] so [Music] so you

Channel: Gary Gough

Views: 41,119

Keywords: how to photograph waterfalls, how to photograph waterfalls for landscape photography, long exposure photography, long exposure tutorial, photographing waterfalls, photography for beginners, photography, waterfall photography settings, landscape photography, waterfall photography, photography tips, photography basics, how to, settings for waterfall photography, camera settings for waterfall photography, waterfall camera setting, best settings for waterfall photography

Id: HZYXdLRuRI8

Length: 28min 14sec (1694 seconds)

Published: Sun Feb 28 2021