Photography how-to: The basics and beyond

[Dbl]

If you are looking for some basic information on your new camera here is an explaination on some of your camera settings and how they relate to each other. We will add to this over time as more questions come up but feel free to ask questions.

ISO - refers to the light sensitivity of your cameras sensor. The higher the ISO number the less light that you will need to get your photo.

Aperture - Is the number you see such as F 2.8. It refers to the opening in the lens that allows the light to enter the camera and get to the sensor. Here is the funny part, the lower the number, such as f2.8 the larger the opening is! The higher the number the smaller the aperture is. So when you see stopping down in aperture it means the number is larger or a smaller opening. If you see open up the aperture this means a lower number or larger opening.

Shutter speed - This is the number you see usually in a fraction, such as 1/60s. This number refers to how long the shutter in the camera is open allowing light to get to your sensor. Higher numbers or faster shutter speeds such as 1/2000s means less light getting to the sensor. Lower shutter speeds will give you less ability to stop motion or camera movement resulting in a picture that my be "soft" or a bit blurry. Higher shutter speeds are desirable when you want to "freeze" movement taking a sports shot for instance.

You can see all three work together to take your photo. If it is a bright sunny day you will use a lower ISO, a smaller aperture(bigger number) and higher shutter speed. If it is cloudy and you need more light on your subject you will want a higher ISO, larger aperture(smaller number) and slower shutter speed.

One other thing that aperture will control for us is Depth of Field or DOF. This refers to how much of the subject is in focus. So a larger aperture(small number) will give us a smaller DOF and a smaller aperture(large number) gives us a larger DOF. The distance to the subject, the lens focal length and your aperture all affect how much of your subject is in focus.

So if I am taking a close up picture of a flower I may want to use a smaller aperture(large number) to get more of the flower in focus. This means I may need a higher ISO and a slower shutter speed to get enough light on my subject. If I am taking a portrait for instance I may be further away with a medium length lens so I may want to use a larger aperture to give me a shallow DOF so that only the subject is in focus and the background is fuzzy. This concentrates our eye on the subject and not the background.

There are tables and on line calculators that will tell you what your DOF will be for a distance, lens, and aperture. Many cameras also have a DOF preview button as well that can give you a rough idea of what your photo will look like.

This is just a basic explanation there is a lot of great info in the net if you want to get more information or just ask the helpful folks here.

[polarsusd81]

I take a little different angle on explaining ISO, Exposure, and Aperture than most. I try to relate it to the eye and how we see. This is how its done.

Think of ISO as the dilation of your pupil. When you are in extremely bright situations, you pupil dilates down so it is very small, allowing minimal light into your eye so you do not burn your retina. This is the same in effect as using a low ISO (film speed) for your camera. The sensor picks up light just as the lens and retina of your eye process it. Adversely, when you are in a dark room or roaming about late at night out in the woods, the pupil will expand to allow in as much light as possible. Here a high ISO will allow your camera sensor to more quickly process the light coming in.

Exposure and aperture are tied directly to each other with the eye, just as they are in the camera. Here is what you need to do, and it will work anywhere you are. Cover one eye with your hand, and close the other eye for at least thirty seconds. Now you need to very quickly open and close your uncovered eye and process what you see. Next with the same eye, open it and leave it open for a second or two, again processing what you see. In this quick experiment, you will notice that the first time when you quickly opened your eye, you caught one or maybe two things in focus and the rest was just a blur, while in the second eye opening experience (pun intended) you were able to recognize and identify many more objects. This is exactly how aperture and exposure work together. When you have a large aperture (lower f number such as f2.8 or f1.4) the light enters very quickly allowing you to use fast exposures. This in effect will allow you to focus on very little of the actual scene. When you have a smaller aperture (f.8 or higher) the light is entering slower and therefore you must keep the exposure open longer. As you saw in the second part of the experiment, it allows for much more of the scene to be remembered, aka caught in the photo.

I wont get into mixing High ISO with large apertures and long exposures (something for low light conditions with motion) or other anomalies, but this can help the average person become a better photographer at a much faster pace. It is all about the light, and as long as one never forgets that, they can achieve many great things behind the shutter.

[Steve Foss]

As a first exercise in aperture, a good thing to do is set the camera up on a tripod and photograph a flower when it's calm, so the flower is not moving. Just set your iso at 400, your aperture as wide open as it will go, and take your first picture. Then continue the series of the same composition, but at smaller and smaller apertures (larger and larger f-stop numbers) until you've reached the smallest aperture your lens allows.

Then view each of the images one at a time and note the differences in depth of focus. And at some point, the stopped down aperture will mean a shutter speed slow enough that your subject will blur.

All good things to know, and by discovering them for yourself you will have embedded them in your memory.

[finnbay]

Online sites that will post your photos like Photobucket and Flickr are free, but some come with strings attached as to how they might be able to use your images (for promotion, etc.) Other sites like Pbase have a small annual fee.

Rather than going full manual, I would start by leaving my camera on Av and at say, f6.3 or 7.1. Camera will adjust shutter speed for correct exposure. Sometimes I leave it on Tv if I need a particular shutter speed. Leaving the setting on one of these modes keeps you from having to scramble if you need a shot quickly and the light conditions are changing. If you have a subject that you are working on, and can spend some time adjusting your settings as light conditions change, then use the manual for best results.

I never use the "portrait", "landscape", etc. settings. I guess I'm at a loss why they would even put them onto a pro or prosumer camera.

[machohorn]

I have a canon xsi with the standard lens, I think this is a pretty good camera although the lens is limited, but I am looking for a nice lens that does not cost more then the camera, have any suggestions?

[finnbay]

Everyone is going to have a different opinion on this topic. First question you'll generally see is "what are you going to use the lens for?" I will assume for the moment that you are looking for a "walk around" lens, kind of an all purpose lens that is a step up from the kit lens that comes with the camera. Lots of ways to go here, but I have a Canon 28-105 that I carry if I'm just moseying (is that a word?) around town. Light, inexpensive (around $200) and versatile. It is limited. It is not a real wide angle, and it doesn't reach very far as telephoto. But, it is clear and will do macro work as well. I sometimes use this as a portrait lens and am very happy with the results. Other companies make lens' that will fit Canon and are usually a bit cheaper. Some specific Sigma lens' for example come with a very good reputation. I don't use them, so don't feel comfortable suggesting one, but others on this forum will chime in I'm sure!

Quote:

P.S I hope all the other browsers know that these tips are also directed at them and this topic is not just for me lol

Your questions are the same as many who look and are afraid to ask! Keep asking!

[machohorn]

1 more thing about lens, I see they usually offer 2 lens in the same range, one with stabilizion one with out, the price difference is ridicilous.But would you recomend the lens with or without and why?

[finnbay]

First question again is "what are you going to use it for?" Lens stableization is used when there isn't much light and shutter speed is slow. Generally, it will allow you to gain two stops (two clicks down on shutter speed or f-stop) and still give you a chance to get a relatively sharp photo. It does make a difference if you are trying to shoot inside without a flash for instance. It does not work for for action shots, so is not useful for sports. Many people get by without it, depending on there own stabelizing techniques(bracing, etc). Mostly used at weddings, late evening wildlife shoots, band concerts, etc. It is a useful tool in some venues, but overall, could probably get by without it at the hobby level.

[Steve Foss]

Rick, IS is good to have on any lens but really finds its best use on longer telephotos, from 200mm on up.

I'd say go ahead with the lens Ken recommended (I agree it's a good one) and don't bother with the IS version. Just work to develop a good solid steadying technique when you are handholding.

I'm with Ken on the Av mode. I don't use the pre-programmed modes either, but the XSi is considered an entry level camera, and lots of casual users find them pretty handy.

[machohorn]

I like people in their natural state. One other thing is we travel some 7-10 times per year. nothing exotic except, hawaii or mexico. I bring the bino's with see a moose take a pic , then tell every one see looky here at this spot , thats a biggen. and thats why the question on a tele photo. or something like the sunset post that showed the differnt lens far vrs. short. very nicely done.

[finnbay]

If you are looking for an inexpensive telephoto that will give you some reach, Canon has a 75-300mm for about $160. It is a beginner's lens, but I had one a few years ago and I learned a lot from it. It is slow, so difficult to do inside sports, but for outside, it works pretty well.

[Steve Foss]

Hey all:

I was rephotographing the chicory and decided to do a bunch of examples of the effect on depth of focus that different aperture settings cause. Depth of focus being the depth of the focus within the image perceived by the eye as being sharp.

These all were shot with the Canon 30D and Canon 100 f2.8 macro, Kenko 36mm extension tube (to get the lens closer to the flower), tripod, remote shutter release and mirror lock-up (MLU locks the mirror up before the photograph is taken so at very slow shutter speeds the mirror slap won't cause vibration). All at iso100, and you'll see a run from f2.8 up to f32, the most the lens can be stopped down. The focus point was the same in all the images, fixed on the tips of the center of the flower closest to the lens.

Some things to note. First, DOF at that working distance (the front of the flower is less than six inches from the front lens element) is razor thin. The whole depth of the bloom is only about a quarter of an inch. The closer you are to the subject, the shallower the DOF at constant aperture. So this flower at this distance at f2.8 has a tiny DOF, while if the subject was 100 yards away, the DOF might be six feet at f2.8.

Second, you'll see as apertures narrow (number gets higher) that eventually every little speck of dust on the sensor shows up. I cleaned this sensor three days ago. No matter how clean the sensor is, stopping the lens aperture way down shows them all.

Third, lenses do not deliver the sharpest possible image wide open or all the way stopped down (in this case f2.8 and f32, respectively). This lens hits its real sweet spot for max sharpness from f4 to f16 and begins to fall off a bit after that, so at f16 through f32 it becomes increasingly soft. That may not be so easy to see on images this size, but it's true. So even while you are increasing the depth of what appears in focus in the image by stopping all the way down to f32, those portions in focus won't appear quite as sharp as they did at f11.

Fourth: These were shot at shutter speeds ranging from 1/8 second up to several seconds long, and that's why it's important to have a tripod and remote shutter release, and to use mirror lock up to remove camera vibration. I shot these in my home to also remove any issues with wind.

These were shot RAW and were not sharpened or color adjusted in any way, just converted to 750-pixel-across jpegs and saved for Web.

f2.8

f4

f5.6

f8

f11

f16

f22

f32

[finnbay]

Interesting stuff, Steve. Hope this helps a lot of people see the subtle, and sometimes not so subtle differences in f-stop differences, as well as some of the technical aspects of macro photography. Could you briefly also describe a little bit more about extension tubes - usually they come in a set of three and you chose to use the 36mm. Why? What else might be done - what are advantages and disadvantages of other lengths. Good work, ol' buddy!

[Steve Foss]

Thanks, Ken. And the perspectives on DOF extend to all lenses, of course. It was just the macro setup I had in my hand at the moment, and one of the easiest lenses to demonstrate DOF with.

My extension tubes are made by Kenko and come in a set of three for about $160. They are 36mm, 20mm and 12mm long. They twist and lock on between camera and lens just like a teleconverter but they are hollow, so there's no image degradation in using them, and all they are designed to do is push the lens out from the camera body, which allows you to focus on subjects closer to the lens. You can use one, two or all three, and in different combinations to achieve the close focus you need.

When used on a macro lens, which already allows one to focus in quite close, the three tubes in combination can fill the frame with a few letters of the print inside a novel, though the subject is nearly touching the front lens element when that happens.

Using extension tubes can turn any lens into one that can act somewhat as a macro because of the increased ability to focus in close.

Electrical contacts between lens and camera are preserved using the tubes, so autofocus and metering and all still work, though when shooting unmoving close subjects, manual focus is more effective anyway.

Canon's and Nikon's own tubes are much more expensive. Beware real el-cheapo tubes that are made mostly of plastic, because they'll allow the camera/lens to flex a bit, and that isn't good.

I used the 36mm tube in this case because that's how much I needed to push the lens away from the camera in order to get close enough for the framing I wanted.

One drawback is that, though a tube or tubes will allow you to focus more closely, you lose the ability for more distant focus, so if you're using a tube and a moose steps out of the woods 100 yards away you've got to take off the tube before you can capture the moose.

[MN Shutterbug]

One drawback is that, though a tube or tubes will allow you to focus more closely, you lose the ability for more distant focus, so if you're using a tube and a moose steps out of the woods 100 yards away you've got to take off the tube before you can capture the moose.

Yeah, I'm sure the moose will wait patiently for you get the tube off.

As a side note, I know a photographer in Ohio that uses the Kenko extension tubes with his 100-400L and gets amazing results.

[Steve Foss]

Yeah, X-T, since the 100-400 can focus to 6 feet already, it makes a great flower and butterfly lens right out of the gate. With tubes (I shot mine that way, too), you can get really close considering you're at 400mm.

A full set of tubes can turn a lot of lenses into macro or semi-macro lenses.

[Dbl]

Actually Steve the way I have understand it since switching to digital you are partially correct in aperture stop down and lenses. Though I believe it has more to do with the camera sensor then the lens itself. Combining sensor size and resolution or what is known as a photosite are what determine the best sweet spot aperture for a shot or the diffraction limit of the camera. I had some questions about this very issue about 6 or 7 years ago and did some research about it at that time. Since then there have been a number of very good articles written about diffraction.

I quote a recent article by Loyd Chambers written last fall on this very subject which I have seen discussed frequently on a few other forums.

Quote:

There is a very narrow band of optimal apertures at which to shoot with a digital camera, where diffraction and optical aberrations come into play. If you stop down too little, optical aberrations limit the image quality and depth of field. Stopping down too far to increase depth of field results in diffraction, which degrades image contrast and resolution.

The ideal aperture range for best image quality with a digital DSLR lies between 2 stops down from maximum aperture and f/8, typically f/5.6 and f/8 for lenses f/2.8 and faster.

Diffraction is a very visible factor in overall system resolution, probably the main limitation on sharpness, and that for optimum sharpness you are better off with larger apertures like f/5.6 and f/8. f 11 and above and you will start to really see its softening effects.

So this becomes very much an issue when you start dealing with macro and the ability to keep enough of the image in focus. Start shooting at say f11 and higher and the camera sensor and pixel count (photosite size) becomes the issue. I believe you actually have demonstrated this somewhat with your series of photos. You gained increased DOF but in un-retouched photos I am guessing you lost some overall sharpness by stopping down.

A high quality lens allows you just a bit more latitude than a consumer lens. Diffraction is one of the main reasons you don't find many lenses that go beyond f22, it just begins to degrade your image.

[Steve Foss]

That's great info, Dan. Thanks for adding to the perspective. I suspect that a lens' sweet spot may not only vary from lens model to lens model, but also from camera model to camera model since there are different sensors involved.

It's a great idea to take each lens and put it through its paces in the same manner as the above test. It's getting a bit more advanced than a lot of casual photographers want or need to get, but if you have the time and the interest, it'll let you know in which aperture ranges your individual lenses/cameras deliver the sharpest images.

There are times, particularly in landscape photography to use one example, when I'll keep the aperture to f11 in order to avoid the falloff in sharpness that f16 and above brings. In comparing landscape images at f11 from my 17-40, I've found f11 quite sharper throughout than at f22. While the depth of focus at f22 is deeper than f11, the increased sharpness at f11 makes the whole image look better than at f22. Knowing the individual sharpness characteristics of my copy of that lens came through experimentation and comparison, but for me it was time well spent because it helps me do better photography.

Not everybody needs to go to those lengths, for sure, but the info is here for those who'd like to.

[Dbl]

For anyone who is interested, since Ken started this experiment in using your flash manually I will give you some of my thoughts on manual flash. Just remember SS controls ambient exposure. The best thing to do with manual flash is to first take a picture to determine your overall exposure of the scene. Starting with proper exposure of the scene will simplify the rest of this exercise.

Start with your shutter speed at say 1/125s or a stop or two less than what your max sync speed is in this case I believe the 40D is 1/250s. I like to have a stop or two to play with and you will see why in a minute.

Use an aperture that you want to control your depth of field. Now adjust your ISO to make that all work out to a properly exposed scene. So lets use Ken's settings, I would have started with 1/125s which would make the f-stop at F9 or maybe F10 at ISO 400 with his lighting.

What if I didn't want that much DOF, I now have to lower my aperture lets say back to the F7.1 that Ken used, it looks nice because the background is so far from the subject. I must then lower my ISO from 400 to maybe 200. This puts me in the same exposure that Ken was at just slightly different numbers to get a better effect.

We take a shot and look at the histogram. If the histogram looks good we have our camera set for our ambient exposure. Now its time to introduce our manual flash into the picture. I don't use guide numbers but I do like the bar on the back of the flash to determine my flash effective distance. I am using a 580EX similar to Nikons SB-800 in power. A lower power flash will require a bit more juice to get the same results I will be covering.

I happen to know through experimentation that at 8' my flash will give me a good exposure of the subject at 1/4 power on manual. If my subject distance is 12' I will need approximately 1/2 power. At 15' maybe around 3/4 power and so on. This changes slightly based on the color the subject is (light or dark) but it gives you a great starting point to get close in the camera.

Ken mentioned he was at 25' at 1/4 power to me that is about right when lighting for FILL light. That is different than say lighting a portrait at 25' With fill we are just trying to bring out the shadows and add a nice catch light in the eyes of the subject so it will take a lot less power to do this.

Take a shot and look at your photo and histogram for any "blinkies" if your highlight warning is turned on in your camera, it should be if it isn't. Lets say the subject is overexposed slightly we can do a few things to fix that. Stop down the aperture a stop and try again, reduce the flash power slightly, or move the flash further from the subject. In this case lets change our aperture from F7.1 to F8 or F9 and shoot again. Do keep in mind that if you adjust your aperture by one stop you adjust your shutter speed by one stop as well to maintain your ambient. So often it is easier to adjust flash distance or power.

If all looks good you are ready to capture a photo. If the subject is underexposed again we can do a few things, open up your aperture, increase flash power or move the flash closer. Again we will do the easy thing and change our aperture from F7.1 to F6.3. Take a shot and see how it looks.

With in a few test shots you should have a properly exposed shot with some nice fill flash. Good fill flash shouldn't really look like it has a flash look at all.

Remember I started with 1/125s shutter speed? What if I want to darken my background just a bit for a more dramatic look. Now that the subject is properly exposed its easy to change my shutter speed to 1/250s, this will underexpose my background ambient light. If I want to lighten the background up a bit I will decrease my shutter speed to say 1/80s or 1/60s to lighten up my background.

This has no effect on my exposure of the subject at all!!!!!! Shutter speed controls ambient, aperture controls subject exposure. This is the hard one to convince yourself of. Go out and try and convince yourself. You will not learn this by reading my rambling writing. Once you try this a few times it will be easy to get very close to the settings you want with just a few shots.

The big problem here is birds usually don't stay in one place. Manual flash only works when the subject distance is not changing. That is when you want ETTL flash and if it is bright enough HSS for fill.

I hope this is a help to folks willing to experiment with getting your flash off camera. In many cases you will get some very nice lighting effects when your flash can be positioned where it will give you the nicest effects.

[Dbl]

For those interested in HSS applications, you really don't want to use HSS for most sports applications. HSS is designed as a fill flash for outdoors where ambient lighting is too bright to control your DOF. Here is why;

1. It really reduces your flash distance, by a large amount! You can look at the back of your LCD on your flash and see the distance on the bar on the bottom. Put it in HSS and watch the bar drop waaay down.

2. It increases your flash duration, this is bad because the longer your flash duration the less effective the flash is at stopping action. Lower power settings shorten flash duration, stopping faster action. Remember stopping action with flash is controlled by the power off the flash(flash duration) and the aperture and ISO. Your shutter speed ONLY controls the ambient exposure, shutter speed has no effect on flash exposure of the subject!

Do you remember my water drop shots a while back? I shot those at 1/64 power to give me a quicker pulse of light, stopping a fast moving water drop. If you shoot at say 1/4 power your flash duration increases which will likely introduce ghosting in your image. Because the light is longer, exposing the movement of the object longer. Shooting with flash to close to ambient also causes ghosting you want at least two stops difference from ambient, more if you can swing it. Whew!

3. Last using HSS will greatly increase your power consumption of both your flash and camera. My experience has shown as few as 150 flashes with fresh charged batteries in the flash. The flash is going off multiple times with every shot, there goes your batteries.

Flash can be a head scratcher for many it just doesn't quite click especially when flash is moved off camera in manual. You get the concept but it doesn't all fall into place until one day, boom you get it and it is not nearly as hard as you thought. Getting out and shooting different combinations of settings, see what happens when you change SS or aperture or ISO. When you see how these interrelate the light, so to speak will really go off.

[buzzsaw]

Danny, my friend you know far more about flash than I do or probably ever will! I was curious if you know if having it in High Speed Synch mode with a better beamer changes that much? I would think so, whatchoo think? here is an image where I had my flash set up w/the beamer in HSS mode 1/250 sec semi backlit on a cloudy day.

Quote:

For those interested in HSS applications, you really don't want to use HSS for most sports applications. HSS is designed as a fill flash for outdoors where ambient lighting is too bright to control your DOF. Here is why;

1. It really reduces your flash distance, by a large amount! You can look at the back of your LCD on your flash and see the distance on the bar on the bottom. Put it in HSS and watch the bar drop waaay down.

ISO 400 ~ F/4 ~ + 1/3 EV ~ 1/250 sec in manual mode.

I guess I'm saying a agree with you, but think the beamer will change the calculations a bit.

[Dbl]

Mike,

My understanding is that a BB will give you an extra 2 stops of light when your flash head is zoomed to 50mm. BB is Dependant on flash zoom at least that is my understanding. I have heard that on the average with HSS you lose about 1/3 of the flash's power with each stop above 1/250 second shutter speed.

So can a BB give you some help with HSS and loss of flash range? I think it will until you start getting higher shutter speeds probably in the range of 1/800s or so. I don't have personal experience with the BB but have talked to a few users. I think experimentation will provide more concrete numbers than I provided. I hope it gives you some place you can start and see how it works for you Mike.

[Steve Foss]

OK, here's a fuzzy water tutorial.

We strive for lowest iso possible in the camera and the smallest aperture (largest f-stop number), because they produce the slowest possible shutter speeds, and it's the slow shutter speed and the flow of the water across the frame that develop the cotton. This can most easily be done during dark conditions, and some "encourage" that darkness by adding polarizing or neutral density filters, which filter light and darken the scene enough so cloudy-day fuzzy water photography is possible.

Without filters, simply bring a small flashlight and do the work before sunrise or after sunset, when there's enough light to see OK by but it's dark enough to produce shutter speeds from, say, 4 to 25 seconds.

Because of those slow shutter speeds, you're going to need a very sturdy tripod set up solidly, and you'll want to keep from moving around while the shutter is open so the tripod doesn't shift minutely. A remote shutter release or the camera's self time is used so you don't introduce camera movement when you trip the shutter. On shutter speeds of 2 seconds or so, you can use your camera's mirror lockup feature, which locks up the mirror before the shutter trips, also eliminating some camera tremble. On longer exposures, this minute, very short-lived tremble will not have an impact on sharpness so you don't need to use MLU.

When I do fuzzy water work, I almost always strive to get non-moving elements in the frame such as rocks, logs, and/or leaves, because that really sets off the moving water. No need to do this in the woods, either, as there are plenty of communities that have rapids/waterfalls running through town.

I use the histogram extensively to check exposure and highlights when doing this kind of very contrasty work. What I've settled on after a lot of trial and error is to allow the highlights to be blown out as much as a full stop or a bit more. When we're talking fuzzy water, that single stop of shutter speed can have a huge impact. The amount of cottony look changes mightily from 4 seconds to 8 seconds, and by overexposing a bit and allowing blown highlights I can get that added time. I don't worry about the highlights if they are not too badly blown because I can recover them on the photoshop preview screen. It also opens up the shadow areas.

If you don't use post-processing software or don't feel confident with it, you'll want to avoid blowing out those highlights, and in that case the histogram and highlight alert feature (blinkies) once again are your best friends!

As a side note, at those tiny apertures it'll be almost impossible to rid your sensor of every dust particle that'll show up in the bright portions of the image. The narrower your aperture, the more those will show. At f4 you won't see a single one of them.

And don't be afraid to compose tightly. For one thing, longer lenses most often allow you to stop down significantly farther than wide angle lenses, and the more you stop down the aperture, as we know, the slower your shutter speed and the more cottony the look of the water. Also, sometimes tight compositions will be more compelling.

Water speed through the frame is an important variable. The faster the water flows, the less shutter speed is needed to render it cottony. On the flipside, slow-moving water will need much longer shutter speeds for the same effect.

I use manual focus for this work. I focus on a foreground element so I know the whole frame will be in focus. Remember, with your aperture stopped down to the max, you'll have good sharpness all the way from front to back of the image in most situations.

Here are a couple fairly recent examples from the Vermilion River Falls, with no filters used (we waited for sundown on a cloudy day), and with exif included to help folks out.

Canon 1Ds Mk3 and Canon 24mm f1.4L Mk2, Iso50, 6 seconds @ f22, tripod, remote shutter release

Iso50, 10 seconds @ f22, tripod, remote shutter release

As you experiment with this over time, you should also note that there are lots of opportunities to make art with blurred subject motion. It can be effective when no elements in the image are sharp (a very painterly impressionistic feel), and it can be excellent when some elements are sharp (tree trunks) while the surroundings are blurry (leaves in the wind). Moving water opportunities at very slow shutter speeds also include wave action along lakes and oceans.

[fishinchicks]

Excellent info! Thanks Steve!

[cliffy]

Thanks Steve. That was just what I was looking for.