Blurring Water - Having Problems!

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Andrewbullie

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Andrew
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Hi All,


Yesterday evening I visited the local beach to get a few shots as the sun went down. I was armed with 7D, 18 - 200mm and tripod in the hope that I could achieve some shots of what some people term as Dreamy Water effect. Despite having watched tutorial videos on this which gives tips about exposure times etc, I really struggled to get a shot.

The problem I was having was that even when set at F22 (max) and ISO 100, anything over a half second exposure was letting too much light in. Anything under that and the water effect didn't look like a nice misty effect but more like bad camera shake. The water didn't really have waves as such, more like ripples with a few 6" high mini waves breaking.

When turning away from the sun and waiting for the light to drop right down (about 21:20 hrs), I still couldn't achieve the effect at 1 second exposure.

I am clearly going wrong somewhere here and would appreciate any help.

Cheers

Andy
 
You really need an nd filter and an nd grad for the milky water shots at the seaside :-)

The nd filter to block out a couple of stops of light allowing for a longer exposure and the graduated filter to darken the sky down to balance the exposure :)

Also the advantage of using nd filters is that you can open up the aperture a little to say f11/f16 which are usually better as really narrow apertures such as f22 can actually degrade the image.

Hope that helps a little :)

This was 61 seconds at f8 with an nd filter and a graduated filter



This one was taken with an nd2 but at f22 so a little contradictory here but it was a 3 second exposure.



Hope that helps

Nick
 
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Relatively still water isn't likely to give you much of a milky look - wait for a day when there are a few "white horses" dancing on the surface. If you have a polariser, use that if you haven't got any neutral density filters - the pol will cut some of the light and allow longer exposures.
 
Need a 10 stopper.......

I tried my hand at this when I visited Isle of Wight, realised I needed a 10 stopper, searched every camera shop on the island, ended up having to shoot at night (which was OK, but not what i'd originally wanted).
 
Reiterate those that suggested a 10 stopper and an ND grad. I've been after a Lee 10 big stopper for a few months now, can't seem to find Lee stock anywhere!
 
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