Quote Originally Posted by Tannin View Post
I use a CPL frequently, but it has never occurred to me that it might be useful on a waterfall. Why? What do you do with it? A tutorial would be an education for me, Geoff, and perhaps for other members too.
Wow did I miss this one. Sorry folk, don’t see the forum much on the weekends but just so as not to appear rude, I’ll happily answer this. It has certainly been covered by many replies since, but for me it is 100% about the harsh glare removal.

If you have a local waterfall nearby, with a nice tall rock face, just head down there, stand before it, put your eye to the viewfinder and slowly turn your CPL filter around. The differences you’ll see are anything but minor. As noted above too, it’s not only the surface of the rocks, but also often the body of water beneath the waterfall is home to some really harsh glare too. Makes a huge difference.

Regardless of your preferred shutter speed, the effect on the harsh glare is why I use CPL filters.

And just on the shutter speed, I realised on the weekend that it’s far more difficult to get a shot of a water in real time as opposed to getting that silky feel.

Assuming the conditions are favourable (quite overcast) and you want a good DOF (around f/11 to f/13 for me) and good picture quality (low ISO) you’re kind of stuck with a slower shutter speed whether you like it or not.

I guess you have to weigh up if using a shallower DOF and/or boosting your ISO up to try and achieve a more realistic water movement in your shot - is that going to benefit your photograph, or take more from it than what silky water might?

I do quite like the silky water look, thankfully, but I don’t like it too silky and often wish to freeze it a little more than I do. For waterfalls I like to sit around f/13 and ISO 100. This weekend, however, I found myself around f/10 and ISO 200, just to try and freeze it a little more. Even tried a couple at f/6.3. I’ll see the results in a few months when I climb this PP backlog mountain.