Stay tuned to this place. In the next week, lots of interesting articles coming up, spanning subjects from learning to hardware. One new item: I will have the world premiere review of a new small flash modifier you should get. Can’t tell you more, but you will learn soon enough.
Learning Photography: as you know, there are my courses and my e-books. What you may not know is how well they tie in together, and what the benefits are of learning from me, specifically. So check out this article on the e-store site.
I posted this yesterday, and a fellow pro asked me to explain:
This is what I would call an abstract landscape picture. Clearly nature, and nothing man-made, but abstract, almost, in form.
Here’s the larger scene:
(f/22, 1/25 sec, ISO100)
And here, larger still:
(f/22, 1 sec, 100 ISO)
…all from a photo road trip yesterday.
So, the settings.
First, I used slow-ish to slow shutter speeds. As you know, I get those by using low ISO and high f-number, but even at the lowest ISO and highest f-number on a typical lens/camera combo, you will not go able to go slower than say 1/60 or 1/30 second. So I needed a Neutral Density (ND filter. I used my variable ND filter, which is able to go 8 stops darker if need be.
OK, so we can do a slow shutter (for which we must use a tripod). But how slow?
It depends!
For getting rid of all motion you need very slow. Like 10-20 seconds:
(1 sec at f/22, ISO100)
A smooth surface should be a smooth surface, so, the longer the better. 8 seconds, this one.
Waterfalls, a little less slow, since I want to see some texture of the water and its violence. The second pic uses 1/25th sec.
And the picture at the top? Here, too, excessive smoothing takes away the effect. I want to see violence, motion, speed! But I do want to do some smoothing. So I used 1/4 second. Perfect compromise.
Concluding: depending on lens etc, but as a rough guideline, 1/25 sec, 1/4 sec / 1 sec / 10 seconds are typical values for “a tiny bit of smoothing”, “visible smoothing”, “more smoothing”, and “extreme smoothing”. (And of course if I want tp freeze motion it’s 1/1000 sec or faster).
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All this is also discussed also in my NEW “Stunning Landscapes” e-book. Get it here, now.