Shooting waterfalls

Ever since I saw a YouTube video of Karl Taylor demonstrating the effect of slow shutter speeds on moving water, I am trying to find waterfalls and stuff like that. But since I am living in the Netherlands (not at the sea side), that's easier said than done.

T: 1/800 sec (Fast shutter speed, and it's a bit dark)

So I was pretty happy when we went for a small weekend-vacation to CenterParcs (only 25 minutes of driving from our home), where they seemed to have a few nice waterfalls to my surprise. Of course they were small, and man-made, but hey: good enough to do some experiments and take some nice photo's.

T: 4 sec (Slow shutter speed)

The beautiful thing about moving water is that you can 'freeze' it with your camera, using a fast shutter speed. But when you use a slow shutter speed, the water turns into 'mist', and with this effect some really nice images can be
created.

All photo's in this blog show the same waterfall which was the nicest around, and indoors. The first image of this blog was shot with a fast shutter speed of 1/800 sec. The water in this photo seems, more or less, frozen in time. All the drops that are falling down are visible.

The second photo was shot using a slow shutter speed of 4 sec. This time the moving water is blurred out and seems to have a mist-like quality. Personally this is my favourite way of shooting water.

I moved the camera around a bit, used the zoom lens, and made some more experimental shots. Here are some of my favourites. The first one is just to show what it looks like with a fast shutter speed:

T: 1/100 sec (fast shutter speed, but should have been even faster)

Same position, T: 4 sec, nice :-)

This is my favourite waterfall photo of that day. T: 5 sec

Bokeh

Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 II Lens, F-stop: 3.5

When using a small compact camera in a 'standard' way, most of the time much of the foto is in focus. This is because the sensor of such a camera is small, and mostly, the lens is as well.
With a DSLR, things are very different. Because of the bigger sensor and bigger lenses with a larger aperture, a much shallower 'depth of field' can be created. In other words: a very small part of the image, for instance your subject, can be in focus, while the rest is blurry. This method can be used to draw the viewers attention to the subject. Now, the quality of these out-of-focus areas (especially light points) is described as 'Bokeh'. As you can see in the photo on the right, Hellen is nicely in focus while the Christmas tree is blurry and has become a cool 'Bokeh-tree' in the background :-)
To create a nice bokeh-effect you need a lens with a large aperture, for instance the Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 II. The bokeh photo's in this blog were made with one of these. A smaller F-number means a larger aperture, or larger 'opening' of the lens, and this results in a shallower depth of field (so more blurry-ness in the background...).

If there is no lens available with a low F-number, you can get the same result (more or less) with a zoom lens. However, in order to get the effect you have to zoom in on your subject that is relatively close to the lens while the background needs to be pretty far away. Using this method you can even get the effect with a simple kitlens.

Christmas tree bokeh filter construction

Bokeh filter

Christmas tree shaped bokeh

The shape of the bokeh is highly dependant on the construction of your lens. However, there is a fairly simple way to influence this. With a black, dark or non translucent piece of paper, a sharp knife and some sticky tape you can make your own bokeh-filter. Just cut out the desired shape from the black paper, for instance a christmas tree. Then fold the paper is such a way that you can use it as a lens cover. Put this cover over your lens and shoot. Truth be told, the resulted image shown here isn't the best photo possible. It was a quick 'n dirty test of the bokeh-filter principle, and for such a small experiment it was a quite successful one. As you can see the bokeh-lights now have the shape of tiny Christmas trees.

On the web, you will find a lot of discussion about what good/poor bokeh really is. I think it's about your personal taste and what you are trying to get. So go ahead and shoot some 'Bokehlicious' photo's!