Smooth Waterfalls Handheld: For some time, I've been wondering if it's possible to replicate a smooth waterfall taken at a slow shutter speed on a tripod but handheld instead. The idea...

rcdovala

For some time, I've been wondering if it's possible to replicate a smooth waterfall taken at a slow shutter speed on a tripod but handheld instead. The idea is to handhold a camera while photographing a waterfall but use continuous shooting to expose approximately 10 images keeping the camera a steady as possible. Then using Photoshop import these 10 images into a stack and average the photos. The technique is identical to stacking photos and averaging to reduce noise. I have included an image to show some preliminary results of this technique. In this case, I have only used 3 images. The images were aligned, stacked then averaged. I had these 3 images on hand. I was in the hospital for 6 days with pneumonia and I'm still not fit to go out and experiment by capturing more images of the same subject. However, I've included the final result of averaging the 3 images and I hope that it will encourage others to try this technique. Let me know what you think. I realize that the photo is far from a polished image.

(Download)

speters Loc: Grangeville/Idaho

rcdovala wrote:

For some time, I've been wondering if it's possibl... (show quote)

Yep, that is a common practice when shooting handheld!

rmorrison1116 Loc: Near Valley Forge, Pennsylvania

Looks good...

RichardTaylor Loc: Sydney, Australia

Good result.

Doddy Loc: Barnard Castle-England

Great outcome.

dpullum Loc: Tampa Florida

Photo end result is excellent, however you did not tell the whole story. EXIF shows f=16 and S 1/15 sec. [right?]

You have a steady hand taking 1/15 sec photos, but would it not have been OK to use a higher speed as typically needed for those with vibrating hands. Since you are stacking, the moving part of the resulting photo would have been blurred and the fixed part sharp, which was your goal.

jerryc41 Loc: Catskill Mts of NY

Good result

ELNikkor

Never tried photo stacking, but this result gives it a lot of credence. Hope you recover soon from your illness.

dumbo

Beautiful. Well done. Going through the Norwegian Fjords a few years ago, there were some beautiful water falls.
Please tell me how to "stack" and then average without using Photoshop, if that's possible.

bsprague Loc: Lacey, WA, USA

I learned something new! Thank you.

CindyHouk Loc: Nw MT

dumbo wrote:

Beautiful. Well done. Going through the Norwegian Fjords a few years ago, there were some beautiful water falls.
Please tell me how to "stack" and then average without using Photoshop, if that's possible.

I would like to learn this as well but I don't have Photoshop, I have Affinity...will have to youtube how to do this with that program! I love the image as well.

rcarol

dpullum wrote:

Photo end result is excellent, however you did not tell the whole story. EXIF shows f=16 and S 1/15 sec. [right?]

You have a steady hand taking 1/15 sec photos, but would it not have been OK to use a higher speed as typically needed for those with vibrating hands. Since you are stacking, the moving part of the resulting photo would have been blurred and the fixed part sharp, which was your goal.

I was using photos I had on hand for my experiment. I was using IBIS and as I recall, a somewhat wide angle of view. Perhaps a higher shutter speed would work but certainly would have required more images to average.

rcarol

dumbo wrote:

Beautiful. Well done. Going through the Norwegian Fjords a few years ago, there were some beautiful water falls.
Please tell me how to "stack" and then average without using Photoshop, if that's possible.

I'm not sure if it is possible to do this outside of Photoshop.

rcarol

bsprague wrote:

I learned something new! Thank you.

You're welcome. I think that it has potential.

tdekany Loc: Oregon

CindyHouk wrote:

I would like to learn this as well but I don't have Photoshop, I have Affinity...will have to youtube how to do this with that program! I love the image as well.

You can do it in Affinity as well.