Long Exposures: Achieving those streaking cloud/misty water effects

[mickeymoo21]

Yeah go for it Rick more than happy for you to move it wherever you want, it probably makes more sense as it relates to land and seascapes, I probably should have added it to the exisitng one in the first place!

[MBPhoto]

Outstanding article. It has given me an insight into how you achieve such amazing shots and has given me the incentive to get out and try some of this work out over my short holidays.

Well done. This one will be going away with me.

[ricktas]

Yeah go for it Rick more than happy for you to move it wherever you want, it probably makes more sense as it relates to land and seascapes, I probably should have added it to the existing one in the first place!

Thanks Michael, its now in the land and sea scapes Hints and Tips thread, sticky'd at the top of that forum, and I have unsticky'd it here.

[mickeymoo21]

Thanks Mark. Thanks Rick for fixing that up I appreciate it.

[MrJorge]

Thank you for taking the time Michael. I just bought a 10-20 for my camera and am looking at getting into some of this when the opportunities arise. I am sure this info will come in very handy.

[Jcas]

Great info, i appreciate your efforts, thanks .....

[para]

Micheal
That is awesome apreciate your time you have taken to help others with this.

[mickeymoo21]

Glad that this info is useful guys, thanks for having a read.

[The_Camera_Poser]

Excellent stuff- thanks!

One thing I've taken to doing is "bracketing" (I don't know what other term to use) the shutter speed on moving water. Shooting in Tv, I try and get the greatest range possible by going to the slowest shutter speed possible without blowing the water, and the increasing it slowly until 1/15 or so. I do this because I can never predict what the water will do at a certain shutter speed- I'm sure I'll get better at this in time.

[mrsamo]

Could you explain to me how to do (c), its the one of the pier. What filter do I need for this?

[mickeymoo21]

Bracketing is a good way to try as well, as you can then see the results of slightly different settings, over time you will then get a good feel for what settings to use.

Mrsamo, for c the only filter I used was a circular polarising filter, in this shot it didn't really serve all that much of a purpose, it darkened the shot a little and added a bit of contrast and saturation, all of this could really have been done in post processing, as I didn't need the polarising effect.

The main thing for this shot was the long shutter speed of 300 seconds which allowed for the cloud movement to blur/streak, the reason for the 300 second shutter speed was because I needed it to expose the photo correctly with the ISO set to 100 and the apeture to f/22. Doing this sort of photo will take a bit of practice and experimentation for you to get a feel for how long a photo will need to be exposed to get a correct exposure as your cameras light meter will generally only work upto a maximum shutter speed of 30 seconds (for most DSLRs anyway) so all this must be done with the bulb setting on your camera.

I hope that explains how that particular photo was done a bit better, if not let me know and I can try and explain it a bit better.

[Redback51]

Just seen this Michael...a terrific piece of work and thanks for sharing. Nice to learn something new so early in the new year.

Cheers

[Sarge]

Hi Michael.

Wow, that has really helped me understand alot about your beautiful pictures!! Your pictures are really insiring and really beautiful!

Thanks for putting it up. I was just going through this section and came across it.
Sarge