Kadambi Waterfall

Waterfalls are some of the most beautiful natural wonders you can photograph. But though they can look simply stunning, photographing waterfalls is not easy to do well. That Sunday I had gone to Kudremukh National Park hoping to photograph some birds or animals. It was drizzling on & off. As I couldn’t get any good sighting that day, I thought I will try my luck photographing tried and tested Bonnet Macaques at Kadambi falls which were featured in my blog earlier. Even they were on holiday. All I could get was a fleeting glimpse of Female Grey wagtail (Motacilla cinerea) on a very vertical slope of the waterfall.

Female Grey Wagtail

So disappointed I turned towards the waterfall. To make matter worse the rain increased in intensity. After few minutes of a heavy rain there was brief break. That is when I tried to take few photos of the waterfall. For the waterfall photography light was perfect. There was no need of any ND filter as the light was very low intensity. I only used circular polarizer filter. I used my newly purchased Canon EOS 5D mark II with Canon EF 24-105mm f/4.0 L IS Lens. As it was raining I did not have time to setup tripod. The bridge across the waterfall gave a nice view of the waterfall. So I opted to support the camera on the bridge railing to take shots. Aperture was kept at f/22. Shutter speed varied from 1/2 to 1.5 seconds.

Kadambi Waterfall

When we need photograph waterfall you need to understand that water can be photographed in two ways. One using fast shutter speed which freezes water droplets make the waterfall looks like that it is suddenly frozen. Better way to photograph a waterfall is to use slow shutter speed. The key to getting a silky water effect is to use a slow shutter speed. Balanced and diffused light is great for waterfalls because it helps bring out details in the shadows and amplify the contrast. The best diffused light occurs on overcast days (the clouds act as natural diffusers). It is better to walk around the waterfall and explore different angles and camera positions. Shoot at an angle instead of directly in front of the falls. As it was a restricted national park and since it was raining I did not have liberty to do those. So I stuck to the common front of the waterfall picture.

Kadambi Waterfall

To get that silky water effect you see in all the waterfall photographs, you’ll need a long shutter speed. So, set the camera to Manual mode. Use a small aperture which helps you get a longer shutter and it helps keep everything in sharp focus. I recommend starting with f/16 and then going smaller if that doesn’t give you a slow enough shutter. Some photographers will tell you to always use the smallest aperture possible on your lens, but I avoid this because lenses usually lose sharpness at their smallest apertures due to diffraction.

Use the lowest ISO speed on your camera. This also helps you get a longer shutter, but it has another benefit too: lower ISO speeds will produce less noise and capture more dynamic range. Since you’ll be using a long shutter speed, your image will be much more sensitive to noise, so a low ISO will help prevent that noise. Start with a shutter speed of a few seconds. When photographing waterfalls, finding the right shutter speed involves a lot of experimentation, but a speed of 2 seconds is usually a good place to start. Be prepared to use shutter speeds ranging from 1 to 30 seconds. Unfortunately since I could not use my tripod I used relatively faster shutter speed of 1 second.

Kadambi Waterfall Fast shutter speed

Common mistake is to use faster shutter speed. Just to show you what happens I used a commonly used shutter speed of 1/90th of a second in this last shot before I ran to cover to escape from the rain. See the water droplets which are frozen and falls does not look as silky as it should. I plan to go there again once rains are reduced so that I can get the really long exposure and the subsequent really silky effects.

Ship Wreck HDR

There is a wrecked ship lying in The Gurpur River near Tannir Bavi, Mangalore. Locals claim it was wrecked during the 2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami. It provided me a very nice opportunity to test the new version of Photomatix Pro 4 software. Even though Adobe Photoshop has now built in HDR function, Photomatix is one of my favorite HDR software.

High dynamic range imaging (HDRI or just HDR) is a set of techniques that allow a greater dynamic range of luminance between the lightest and darkest areas of an image than current standard digital imaging techniques or photographic methods. The human eye can perceive scenes with a very high dynamic contrast ratio, Human eye sees more than 15 stops with a contrast up to 16384:1. Adaptation is achieved in part through adjustments of the iris and slow chemical changes, which take some time (e.g. the delay in being able to see when switching from bright lighting to pitch darkness). At any given time, the eye’s static range is smaller, around 10,000:1. In contrast digital photographs, color negatives and slides consist of multiple film layers that respond to light differently. Most digital camera sensors have 11 stops of light with a contrast of 2048:1. To obtain High dynamic range we need to resort to High dynamic range imaging technique.

Ship Wreck HDR

I used my Canon EOS 5D mark II with Canon EF 16-35mm f/2.8 L USM Lens to take this photograph. I shot three bracketed shots with 2 stop exposure variation between the shots. So one shot was 2 stops under exposed than the normal exposure, second shot was correctly exposed and third was 2 stop over exposed. I fed these 3 shots into Photomatix through Adobe Lightroom using the new Adobe Lightroom plugin. After going through the Photomatix it produced a 32 Bit file which I did tone mapping to my taste. After developing in tone mapping process of Photomatix it was imported back to Lightroom as 16 bit Tif file. I exported the correct exposure file and the HDR file to Photoshop to remove the ghosting artifact. Once corrected I re-imported back to Lightroom.

Ship Wreck HDR

I would recommend any HDR enthusiast to refer to the invaluable HDR website along with very informative tutorials by Trey Ratcliff called Stuck In Customs. It has given me several insights, tips and methods to improve on my HDR photos.

Varanga - 16mm

Varanga is a small sleepy village located in the Udupi district of Karnataka at a distance of 25 Kms from Karkala and 43 Kms from Moodabidri on the way from Karkala to Agumbe. I reached Varanga just before sunset to capture the nice evening light. I had visited Varanga many a times and each time the experience is unique and exhilarating. The Kere Basadi of Varanga is unique Jain temple situated in the midst of a gentle green lake. Serene lake contrasts well with the sharp quadrilateral architecture of the temple and gentle swaying hills at the distance.

I used Canon EOS 5D mark II fitted with Canon EF 16-35mm f/2.8 L USM Lens and Hoya circular polarizing filter to get these pictures. I used various focal lengths from 16mm to 35 mm take these photos. What you can notice is use of hyperfocal distance to get both foreground as well as background in sharp focus. I had mentioned in the earlier blog about use of hyperfocal distance to catch flying kite as well as moon in sharp focus. Unfortunately hyperfocal distance will not work effectively for a 600mm focal length I was planning. It really is effective in normal to wide angle lenses.

Varanga - 16mm

So what is the definition of this term Hyper focal distance? The hyperfocal distance is the closest distance at which a lens can be focused while keeping objects at infinity acceptably sharp; that is, the focus distance with the maximum depth of field. Digital cameras with tiny sensors have almost eliminated need to get the calculator to get this hyperfocal distance. Tiny sensors which you find on most point and shoot cameras will give you a universal focus right from close up to infinity. Many manufacturers have eliminated the scale displaying a zone of focus on their digital lenses all together in recent years. So is it just meant for film cameras and not relevant to digital? No. As more people start venturing into larger sensors (35mm or larger) they will come to face with the hyperfocal distance.

Varanga - 23mm

When you focus your lens there will be a zone that is in focus and areas that are out of focus. The area that is in focus is called the focal plane of acceptable sharpness. The interesting thing about this focal plane is that, when you focus on a subject, one third of the distance closest between subject and camera is in focus; secondly, two thirds of the zone that stretches out from and behind the subject is also in focus.

In a landscape photography you want maximum area in focus (foreground to background), so if you keep your lens focus to infinity your focal plane stretches 1/3 in front of infinity and 2/3 beyond infinity. What is is the use of the focus infinity? it is a waste as it is supposed to be focus anyway. So trick is to focus little in front of the infinity mark so as to stretch the focal plane just into infinity. That will give you a sharply focus foreground and sharply focused background too.

Varanga - 35mm

There are 3 rules to get best out of this trick.

• Use wide angle lens which inherently has greater depth of field.
• Use smaller aperture like f/8-f/16 which give you a great depth of field.
• If you don’t have depth of field calculator handy, focus on a point about a third the distance between you and the subject and use depth of field preview button to check the focal plane.

If you want to be accurate and mathematically inclined there is a formula to calculate this hyperfocal distance. It is dependednt on several factors. The focal length of the lens, aperture, sensor size etc. I don’t want to confuse you with all that jargon. If you are interested to know the calculation check links below.

Learn more about hyperfocal distance at these links.

• Digital Photography school has a nice article Hyperfocal Distance – Photographer’s Friend
• Cambridge In Color also has a calculator and shows an excellent example of it in use http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/hyperfocal-distance.htm
• You can calculate exact hyperfocal charts with http://www.dofmaster.com/charts.html.
• Martin Bailey has the following podcast on hyperfocal distance – Understanding Hyperfocal distance , DOF Explainedand the pdf-file to the DOF Explained
• Apple iTouch/iPhone/iPad has a free hyperfocal distance calculator called Field Tools
• Android phones have a similar app called Photo Tools

If you need more info on Varanga check this nice article on Deccan Herald – Basadis are testimony to rich Jain culture.