"Silky Waterfalls?": Always wanted to be able to take these pictures with a tripod but never knew how. Need what kind of filter/what travel tripod and what settings on my Canon T7I?

Travelfan

Always wanted to be able to take these pictures with a tripod but never knew how. Need what kind of filter/what travel tripod and what settings on my Canon T7I? Will be used seldom for this type of picture...so "budget cost" is a must. Thank you.

Longshadow Loc: Audubon, PA, United States

Experiment.
Slow shutter speeds will blur the water, the slower the speed, the more blur.
All falls look different and would warrant a different speed for THAT waterfall.
Some falls look better real slow, some not so much.

If the scene is too bright, you may need a neutral density filter to reduce the light going into the camera.

The tripod should be decent and capable of holding your rig.

bleirer

Just to add to what Longshadow said, if you have Photoshop user Gene51 recently showed us how to take multiple shots and blend them, without needed a neutral density filter.

CHG_CANON Loc: the Windy City

Travelfan wrote:

Always wanted to be able to take these pictures with a tripod but never knew how. Need what kind of filter/what travel tripod and what settings on my Canon T7I? Will be used seldom for this type of picture...so "budget cost" is a must. Thank you.

Look at your lenses and determine the filter size needed. Look at a screw-in Neutral Density filter (ND). They come in different strengths. They can be 'stacked', but one is better than two combined. They're technical details can get confusing, see the chart at the bottom of this wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutral-density_filter

A 10-stop ND works great in bright sunlight, but may be so dark, even in bright light, that you have to focus with the ND removed and then screw-in and shoot. A 4- or 6-stop ND might be a good place to start.

RWR Loc: La Mesa, CA

Travelfan wrote:

Always wanted to be able to take these pictures with a tripod but never knew how. Need what kind of filter/what travel tripod and what settings on my Canon T7I? Will be used seldom for this type of picture...so "budget cost" is a must. Thank you.

Just photograph the outflow from a sewage treatment plant - no one will know the difference.

CO

Neutral density filters is what you need. Don't get the variable density type. You can get the dreaded X effect and they often introduce a slight color tint. A 3-stop or 4-stop fixed neutral density filter would be about the best one to get right now. Autofocus will still work with those.

Your Canon T7i's native ISO is 100. Dial that in and stop down the aperture to about f/8. Try not to stop down the aperture smaller than about f/8 as diffraction will start to make your image a little softer. If you find, you want a slower shutter speed, go with a stronger ND filter.

usnret Loc: Woodhull Il

Pictures of water falls are one of my favorite landscapes to shoot. I use a #6 B&W ND filter with great results. One thing I like about it is that I don't have to remove it from the lens to achieve sharp focus. I like to shoot in manual mode with an aperture of F-11 or higher and take lots an lots of shots at various shutter speeds. An easy way to take the guess work out of what will result in the best picture. Then during post processing I weed out the duds and make note of the meta data of the keepers.(a valuable teaching tool). Even if it's very early in the morning or near dusk in the evening or anywhere in between I know that a few will make their way to a frame. I could care less if I fill up a 32 gig card, they're cheap and re-usable. Any sturdy tripod will work. As with most of my purchases, I narrow it down to what will likely work best for my needs then base my final choice on the reviews of other purchasers. As a final note, shooting without an ND filter pretty much robs you of being able to control the AMOUNT of "silkyness "

CHG_CANON Loc: the Windy City

usnret wrote:

Pictures of water falls are one of my favorite lan... (show quote)

Great point. One can set-up the tripod, camera, focus the lens, and using a wired remote, just shoot away. When enough of one setting, just change the shutter speed / ISO and shoot more, coming back with many (hundreds) of subtle to significantly different compositions to sort through and select the best & keep just the best.

flyboy61 Loc: The Great American Desert

Cheapest solution:
Lowest ISO, Tripod, remote release or exposure delay...stop the lens down to 11, 16, or 22...Pay NO attention to the " expert" doomsayers that scream DIFFRACTION! (Makes little to no difference in the real world!) Depending upon the waterfall, a shutter speed of 1/15 sec. may do, but 1/8 may be better. If all else fails, a good 2 or 3 stop ND filter will likely do all you would like. God lluck!

Travelfan

You are talking to somebody who has an "auto" camera for a reason...just like a car. No hassels. 10 stop? No idea what that means. Somebody said get a #6 B&W nd lens. I looked those up and the cost (for one or two times used) is out of this world. If I was 21 instead of 71 and get tons of years use I'd say yes. But with health problems I will get little use out of it. Lets go budget. I hope my Canon has a "simple setting" for what I need....otherwise buying a filter/tripod for me would be a waste. Besides...nobody has said "you should have used a nd filter/10 stop for that waterfall next time.

bleirer

Travelfan wrote:

You are talking to somebody who has an "auto&... (show quote)

Auto won't do it. At a minimum you need control of the shutter speed to even get started. It has to be slow, and if it is a sunny day the way to get to slow is to put something dark over the lens, the nd filter.

You could look for a used ones on sites like keh.com or mpb.com.

CHG_CANON Loc: the Windy City

Travelfan wrote:

You are talking to somebody who has an "auto&... (show quote)

You said you wanted silky waterfalls, most of us probably thought you were serious ....

The longer you read UHH, the more expensive it gets.

The tripod need is because you'll struggle to hand-hold at slow shutterspeeds, with or without the ND filter. The more expensive filters, say $65 and higher, are for a few reasons, including no color cast so your images don't have a funky odd color. Try looking at KEH.com to see if they have any used filters that fit your filter size needs.

CO

flyboy61 wrote:

Cheapest solution:
Lowest ISO, Tripod, remote release or exposure delay...stop the lens down to 11, 16, or 22...Pay NO attention to the " expert" doomsayers that scream DIFFRACTION! (Makes little to no difference in the real world!) Depending upon the waterfall, a shutter speed of 1/15 sec. may do, but 1/8 may be better. If all else fails, a good 2 or 3 stop ND filter will likely do all you would like. God lluck!

Incorrect. Diffraction does make a difference. It definitely softens the image. If a longer exposure is needed, a stronger ND filter is the way to go.

bleirer

A pretty good how to https://photographylife.com/landscapes/how-to-photograph-waterfalls

Gene51 Loc: Yonkers, NY, now in LSD (LowerSlowerDelaware)

Travelfan wrote:

Always wanted to be able to take these pictures with a tripod but never knew how. Need what kind of filter/what travel tripod and what settings on my Canon T7I? Will be used seldom for this type of picture...so "budget cost" is a must. Thank you.

A shutter speed of at least 1/4 second or longer would be a good starting point. Too long and they start to look like cotton candy, too short and they don't look quite right. I prefer to see a little detail in the water.

You can use a low ISO like ISO 50, and small aperture, like F11 or F16, but a better more flexible approach is to use a neutral density filter that will reduce your exposure by at least 3-4 stops. Small apertures do create softness from diffraction, and with smaller sensors, like an APS-C (1.5 or 1.6 crop factor), or a Micro 4/3 (2x crop factor), you can already start to see softness at F8.

Here are a few examples.

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