Why mess with the settings? - Shutter speed

September 20, 2012  •  Leave a Comment

A waterfall shot with a  medium shutter speed does not look that great.Brewster River Waterfall - 1/250 sec Maybe it looks like a silly topic but I do get asked once in a while why one should mess with the camera settings. The manufacturers make them so advanced and so smart that the Auto option should just take care of it all, right? And while I can talk about it I usually don't have anything to show it on.

So here, I remembered to shoot an example of how a shutter speed setting can make quite a dramatic difference. In the first photo, you're looking at an exposure of 1/250 sec, in the second 1/30 sec. I know, pretty obvious, but the goal was to put them side by side.

And too bad I did not shoot another example with a faster shutter speed over 1/1000 sec. In my opinion flowing water, and especially waterfalls, do not look that good when shot on auto.

A waterfall shot with a  slower shutter speed looks better than medium shutter speed.Brewster River Waterfall - 1/30 sec

And I do not want to imply that the only way to shoot waterfalls is on a tripod with a very slow shutter speed. It's just that I like them either somewhat blurred with a slower shutter speed or razor sharp with a very fast shutter speed. There does not seem to be a happy medium for me.

On the slow side, experimenting with what works based on the given water speed is a good idea. Sometimes, shutter speed of 15 - 30 seconds turning all into milk looks good, other times 1 or 2 seconds leave just enough texture in the blurred water to make it look even better.

Have fun messing with the setting!


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