Slowing down shutter speed.

[Morag2]

Hey all, I was wondering, how do you get a slower shutter speed in the same lighting. I was taking some water pictures and I wanted to slow it down to get that blur effect on the water, however that made my pictures far too bright. I tried shrinking my aperature but my camera doesn't go smaller than f8, so does that mean I just have to wait for different (darker) lighting.

[granthagen]

Morag2 writes:

I was taking some water pictures and I wanted to slow it down to get that blur effect on the water, however that made my pictures far too bright. I tried shrinking my aperature but my camera doesn't go smaller than f8, so does that mean I just have to wait for different (darker) lighting.

Ahhh! This is exactly the sort of thing that gives you an excuse to buy more equipment!

Get a neutral density filter, or several at different densities to stack to get the effect you want.

Like everything that has an impact on exposure, these filters are measured in stops, but manufacturers seem to have a hard time agreeing on how to label them. The table below shows you what typical labels are used for the differnt strength ND filters:
What The Numbers Mean
ND Type
B+W, Cokin, Hoya
Lee, Tiffen
1-stop
ND2, ND2X
0.3 ND
2-stop
ND4, ND4X
0.6 ND
3-stop
ND8, ND8X
0.9 ND

For water softening effects you might want to be able to shoot at around 1 second or a bit faster for rapidly moving water.

With ND filters you can shoot at large apertures too, for more creative control over depth of field.

If you have two polarizing filters, they can be stacked to give a sort of variable ND effect, the strength depending on the orientation of the filters to one another.

Sorry about the above table. The formatting was not retained when it was pasted.

Grant

[Morag2]

Thanks, I will have to look into some filters... once I get money:-)