Freezing point of Water

[WestLothian]

This is not the temperature question but the exposure question.
What is the recommended shutter speed for freezing the motion of a cascade?

[thunder]

Don't think there's a single answer to this question! With a digital camera you can surely check to see if you've got the effect you want, and if not take another pic.

henrya

[Lance Morgan]

There is no right answer to this. A longer exposure time is required to get the effect you want i.e water cascading requires longer time for blurred white woolly effect. Best to use a tripod to keep everything stationary sharp.

[Boddie]

Originally Posted by WestLothian

This is not the temperature question but the exposure question.
What is the recommended shutter speed for freezing the motion of a cascade?

In my opinion that shot would have been better with silky water. If up close it can be more dramatic with a quick shutter speed but with so much colateral in this image you need a focal point

[eeyore]

as has been said thee is no definitive answer to this you need to experiment , but as a general guide , when i was in the yorkshire dales last year I found that anywhere over 1/250th gave the frozen droplet effect whilst falling water started going blurry at 1/30 and was propperly silky at 1/15

these times were for water falling vertically - obviously if it flowing downhill then times may be different as its speed will vary.

Somewhere arround there is the thread i did at the time (may 06) showing the same fall at all speeds from 1/500 down to 1 sec

[WestLothian]

Thanks for the tips - plenty to try at the next visit.
This was a fast 50mm lens to get the exposure.
If a slow shutter speed is used, I can use a longer lens with a much smaller aperture.

Sadly Eeyore's old thread and images seem to have been wiped from the forum.
The search tools find nothing older than 22-05-2006 for his user ID.

[eeyore]

Originally Posted by WestLothian

Thanks for the tips - plenty to try at the next visit.
This was a fast 50mm lens to get the exposure.
If a slow shutter speed is used, I can use a longer lens with a much smaller aperture.

Sadly Eeyore's old thread and images seem to have been wiped from the forum.
The search tools find nothing older than 22-05-2006 for his user ID.

hey ho - when i get a minuite , which wont be tonight, i will put them up again on this thread

[Maccattack]

If there is a lot of white water I often end up with nothing interesting to look at with a slow shutter speed ( this usually means tripod related photography) , when hand held it is obviously safer to use a faster shutter speed and try to wait for good light to make the picture more interesting .You could also use a small amount of flash to catch the droplets or experiment with slow sych flash . I could spend days standing around in streams near waterfalls ( for some reason I often end up crouching down in the stream to get the perspective I want )
So no easy answers from me then

Cheers

Malcolm Mac