Movement with your pictures, and some theory

Most people like to just capture the moment sitting still.  Now, you dont always have to do that.  Usually you dont want any sort of blur in your pictures.  Its just not professional, dont do it.  However, its still a tool in your bag that you can use, if you know how to do it.

Here is how to make moving water into a gorgeous picture.

For this, you most definitely want a tripod.  Also, if you haven't figured out what that "M" is on your dial, its time to break it in.  It stands for manual, even though you can use your tV (shutter priority setting), we will be using manual.

Head out to the beach, you want to be there sometime around sunset.  15 minutes before the sun sets is a great time to get there and set all of your gear set up.

If you are lucky and live in California you will be able to easily find a beach with a lot of rocks in the water.  This makes for an even better effect.  But if not, you can find a pier or something similar.

Since we are shooting once the sun is down, we are able to have a much slower shutter speed.  We want at least 30 seconds per exposure.  If you really want your picture to come out great, you want your shutter to stay open for a couple of minutes or more.  To do this, you need to put your camera's shutter speed (In manual mode now) in the "B".  B stands for Bulb Exposure.  Why is it called bulb, I have no idea.  I just know that when you are in bulb, your shutter stays open for as long as you have the shutter button pressed. This is why you might want to splurge and buy yourself some sort of shutter release cable.  You can find them real cheap on amazon.  I spent 15 bucks on mine and it works great.  Otherwise you will have to have your finger on the shutter and that will be annoying as well as it will probably cause your camera to shake.

Most likely you wont be able to get a properly exposed picture with a wide open aperture so you will need to dial it back.  f/22 is a great place to start, it will cause your aperture to close up and will force you to have a longer shutter speed to get a proper exposure.  (also note that I took this picture off of the internet.  I would never recommend putting your ISO on Auto, thats just bad news.  I also shoot RAW, never jpeg)


Here is a little bit of lighting theory for you to know that will come in handy here.
Say you have a shutter speed of 1/500th of a second.  If you moved it to 1/250th of a second, you are letting one stop of light in.  (meaning it will be brighter by one stop)  if you move it from 1/500th of a second to 1/1000th of a second, you are going darker by one stop.  With shutter speeds, the stop changes by dividing your shutter speed in half, or doubling it.  Pretty easy to remember actually.

With your aperture, the same thing happens actually.  If you go from 5.6 to 4 you are letting in one stop more of light.  If you went from 5.6 to 8, you are stopping down one step, letting less light in by one stop.  Just remember this, its simple math.
There is a good way that I discovered to learn your f/stops.
break them down into two different rows. (most lenses these days have many more f/stops than this)

1.4 - 2.8 - 5.6 - 11 - 22  etc
2.0 - 4.0 - 8.0 - 16 - 32 etc.

put them in these two categories and each number doubles.  This makes it easier to memorize.
instead of the number doubling like the shutter speed, its just a number over.  so a one stop difference would be like going from 1.4 to 2.0.  from 2.0 to 2.8 and so on.  Easy once you practice it a little bit.
There is a chart below to help you visualize this easier.


It comes in handy here because once you are in Bulb your camera wont tell you if its metered to be over exposed or not.  So, what you do is you set your camera to give yourself a proper exposure at 30 seconds.  Since we want more time for to get more movement in the water, we can start doing some fun math :)

Going from 30 seconds to 60 seconds will give you one more stop, the same goes with going from 60 to 120 seconds.

Since we did this we need to also compensate with our aperture.  If we dont, our picture will be too bright.  If you metered out a proper exposure at 30 seconds and f/stop at 4.0 and then you changed your shutter speed to 60 seconds, your new f/stop will be 5.6.  From here if you go from 60 seconds to 120 seconds your new f/stop will be 8.  See the pattern now?

Here is a chart that shows exactly what I am talking about.  Notice that as the f/stop changes, so does the shutter speed.  Each corresponding number is what the proper exposure would be.  Here are 5 sets of exposures, so dont get confused.  A good practice to get the hang of it all is write down your exposures in a log, or check your metadata if you are using Lightroom or Aperture.  Make up a chart like this and see what your other options for shutter speed and f/stop possibilities would be.  

ok, now that we are done with the math lesson, you just keep shooting and dialing in your perfect picture.  The sun is setting rapidly at this point and so your settings are really going to change as well.  Soon you will be able to keep your shutter open for 10 minutes or more even.  Enjoy your newly learned technique.  Its harder than most to get just right, but very rewarding when its done.  The moving tide makes the water look like fog and you get a great effect.