Silky Flowing Water

I am often torn when going to shoot a waterfall or other rapidly flowing water as to whether I want to freeze the water's motion or let the water blur to create a smooth result.  Both of the approaches can create great results.  Knowing how to capture both styles is, of course, essential to making the choice.

The first image in this post was shot at 1/250 second, ƒ8, and ISO 400 on my Nikon D850.   This is just fast enough to nearly freeze the water.  A close drop reveals water droplets thave have been frozen in time, motion only implied by the nature of the waterfall itself.

I shot the same seen with considerably slower settings of 1/8 sec, ƒ19, ISO 64 on the same D850. The stabilized lens and controlling my breath lead to a nice sharp image even with a 58mm lens at too slow speed for hand holding.   

The result is silky water in motion.  It is a different look, but one I wanted as a choice in post-processing my images from this trip. 

The key difference in these shots is shutter speed.  Other settings were adjusted to provide a good exposure.

Another Example

I repeated the process on a small portion of rapids below the fall.  This time two different cameras; I shot the frozen image first on my Z50 and then discovered that it was not able to cut the light enough to make the flowing image possible.  

The frozen motion version was shot at 1/4000, ƒ5.6, 360 ISO on my Z50.  

The flowing motion version was shot at 1/30, ƒ22, 31 ISO on my D850.  This takes advantage of the D850's ability to shoot at very low ISO settings and its Tamron len's very small aperture. I would have like to have reduced the shutter speed to 1/8 to really blur the water, but the bright direct sunlight was too much.