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I recently shot some photos around St Mary's Cathedral (last weekend) and I really wasn’t happy with a shot I took of the water fountain in front of the Cathedral (too slow) - so I took my camera gear to work yesterday and during lunch I though I’d see if I could do a better job. The light wasn’t particularly good (it was extremely overcast and very dull – and then it started to rain) which made it more difficult to achieve the very high shutter speed I wanted to use to freeze the water (I shot in Manual mode and used ISO to compensate for exposure). However I think these shots better represent the vision I had in my head when I took the first… thoughts?...

I took these with my Nikon D90 and Tamron 90mm f/2.8 lens on Manfrotto tripod.

1/2000 sec at f/2.8, ISO 560, 90mm


1/4000 sec at f/2.8, ISO 1100, 90mm

Rodney the #2 is really great! The color suits that timeless mood and you have frozen the action pretty well.

I doubt you'd need such a high shutter though. Did you experiment with any lower perhaps 1/500 or so? It may help to go to f4 or 5.6 to get a tad more DOF.

The other technique you could use (so that you have better control of light) is to use flash when it's relatively dark. Then you can take shutter speed out of the equation and use the fast flash pulse on the speedlite(usually in the order of 1/800 or higher depending on the power) to freeze the motion. Then you have control over quality and quantity of light.

I do not usually like frozen water shots but these are great. I like #1 better as the clear, fresh, crystal colour of the water I find more appealing. The flow of the water has been cut off about midway down the right hand side of the shot which I think is the only shortcomming.

I am torn between the two images, one makes the water appear so clean, fresh and enticing, the other has a nice timeless quality to it...

Well done

Number two for me!

I too like the effect of numner two.

surenj wrote:I doubt you'd need such a high shutter though. Did you experiment with any lower perhaps 1/500 or so? It may help to go to f4 or 5.6 to get a tad more DOF.

The other technique you could use (so that you have better control of light) is to use flash when it's relatively dark. Then you can take shutter speed out of the equation and use the fast flash pulse on the speedlite(usually in the order of 1/800 or higher depending on the power) to freeze the motion. Then you have control over quality and quantity of light.

Yep I tried that and was also very surprised at how fast I needed to go to totally freeze the water. I tried some from as low as 1/800 up to 1/4000 and wished I could have gone higher. The first shot is @ 1/2000 and it and the others at 1/2000 all seemed to be slightly less crisp than the ones I took at 1/4000. I did take some @ f/4 as well but I don't think any of those shots had the nicest shaped water as it turned out.

I was going to try flashing the water as well to see what effects that might have (I did bring my SB-600) but then it started raining so I was out of there

Thanks heaps for the comments and advice