Waterfall Wednesday 11/9/2022

[AlanLichty]

My offering for today is a shot from last week of Beaver Creek Falls. This is a spot a couple of miles upstream from the Sweet Creek waterfall trail where Beaver Creek dumps into Sweet Creek. The viewpoint for Beaver Creek Falls is well off to one side buy the terrain doesn't allow for other points of view so I decided to send my camera out over the water and launched my drone. A bit of careful maneuvering got me a viewpoint out in front of the falls but was still limited by the forest canopy directly behind the drone.

I have been playing around with how to get good waterfall images from a drone and came up with the notion of trying to create a shutter speed simulation by using burst mode on the camera (5 shots in this case) and then calculate the number of images to blend based on the shutter speed - 1/15s in this case. I used the assumption that each subsequent image I added to the stack halved the shutter speed so 3 images would be similar to 1/3.75s and with the interval between each shot I could call this approximately 1/4s. No clue whether those assumptions are realistic but I liked the result better than just stacking all 5 shots from the burst.

 

[JimFox]

Well, it looked like it worked Alan! I sure like the look of this. And what a great vantage point.

 

[AlanLichty]

Well, it looked like it worked Alan! I sure like the look of this. And what a great vantage point.

Thanks Jim - the trail ends on top of the rocks on the right so you can't really get a good view of all the cascades in these falls.

 

[JimFox]

Driving back from Fairplay, Colorado yesterday. So many of the roads coming out of the mountain areas have creeks, streams, rivers running right next to the road. This was the case with this. I saw an area with inviting rock walls, and then an area to pull over. I had to climb down about 20 feet and here was a cool creek with lot's of cool cascades.

 

[Ken Rennie]

I really like the effect on the fast moving water Alan but would prefer a "longer" shutter speed on the splash pool, my preferences however are definitely not mandatory. I don't understand your Maths or your comment about the gap between shots but I am in complete ignorance about drones. Normal mean merging with Smart objects is simple 5 shots at 1/15s is equivalent to 5/15 or 1/3s. Taking account of a gap between shots needs some thinking about but my experience leads me to think that smooth flows may be a little jittery and that the shutter speed will appear longer ie the actual shutter speed plus multiplied by the no of shots plus the gap time multiplied by the number of shots -1. I am presently mean merging 27 shots from a Scottish Waterfall so you will see the fruits of this work later in this post. Ken

 

[AlanLichty]

Driving back from Fairplay, Colorado yesterday. So many of the roads coming out of the mountain areas have creeks, streams, rivers running right next to the road. This was the case with this. I saw an area with inviting rock walls, and then an area to pull over. I had to climb down about 20 feet and here was a cool creek with lot's of cool cascades.

Very nice little water flow. I like your choice for shutter speed and the B&W rendering of the scene.

 

[AlanLichty]

I really like the effect on the fast moving water Alan but would prefer a "longer" shutter speed on the splash pool, my preferences however are definitely not mandatory. I don't understand your Maths or your comment about the gap between shots but I am in complete ignorance about drones. Normal mean merging with Smart objects is simple 5 shots at 1/15s is equivalent to 5/15 or 1/3s. Taking account of a gap between shots needs some thinking about but my experience leads me to think that smooth flows may be a little jittery and that the shutter speed will appear longer ie the actual shutter speed plus multiplied by the no of shots plus the gap time multiplied by the number of shots -1. I am presently mean merging 27 shots from a Scottish Waterfall so you will see the fruits of this work later in this post. Ken

Thanks Ken - my logic was along the lines of the math we use for f/stops where each increment halves the total. In this case 2 shots at 1/15 would be 1/7.5 and 3 would be 1/3.75. I assumed that the gap between shots in the burst is non-zero so estimated that 2 gaps would round the 1/3.75 up to approximately 1/4s. I have absolutely no proof of the underlying math assumptions whatever but liked the results for the falls more than using all 5 shots I took with the burst. It might be interesting to make another layer in PS with all 5 blended for the bottom of the falls. Worth playing around with.....

 

[Ken Rennie]

Thanks Ken - my logic was along the lines of the math we use for f/stops where each increment halves the total. In this case 2 shots at 1/15 would be 1/7.5 and 3 would be 1/3.75. I assumed that the gap between shots in the burst is non-zero so estimated that 2 gaps would round the 1/3.75 up to approximately 1/4s. I have absolutely no proof of the underlying math assumptions whatever but liked the results for the falls more than using all 5 shots I took with the burst. It might be interesting to make another layer in PS with all 5 blended for the bottom of the falls. Worth playing around with.....

Alan I don't think that the Maths is important although my daughter, a Mathematician, might not agree. If the effect works then use it. The downside of blending bursts is the data and the time needed for my ageing computer to work with multi GByte files. It may finish before I go and get my latest Covid top up today. Ken

 

[Jameel Hyder]

My offering for today is a shot from last week of Beaver Creek Falls. This is a spot a couple of miles upstream from the Sweet Creek waterfall trail where Beaver Creek dumps into Sweet Creek. The viewpoint for Beaver Creek Falls is well off to one side buy the terrain doesn't allow for other points of view so I decided to send my camera out over the water and launched my drone. A bit of careful maneuvering got me a viewpoint out in front of the falls but was still limited by the forest canopy directly behind the drone.

I have been playing around with how to get good waterfall images from a drone and came up with the notion of trying to create a shutter speed simulation by using burst mode on the camera (5 shots in this case) and then calculate the number of images to blend based on the shutter speed - 1/15s in this case. I used the assumption that each subsequent image I added to the stack halved the shutter speed so 3 images would be similar to 1/3.75s and with the interval between each shot I could call this approximately 1/4s. No clue whether those assumptions are realistic but I liked the result better than just stacking all 5 shots from the burst.

View attachment 53968

Nice looking falls Alan. Good use of the drone to get this view. Have you tried a lower view point with the drone - essentially like standing in the water in the pool and shooting?

 

[Jameel Hyder]

Driving back from Fairplay, Colorado yesterday. So many of the roads coming out of the mountain areas have creeks, streams, rivers running right next to the road. This was the case with this. I saw an area with inviting rock walls, and then an area to pull over. I had to climb down about 20 feet and here was a cool creek with lot's of cool cascades.

View attachment 53971

Nice flow and shutter for this. Have you tried brightening up the brights. The larger separation of black and white will make this pop, me thinks.

 

[Jameel Hyder]

My contribution is a distant view of the Multnomah falls from the Washington side using a long lens (100-400 with a 1.4x if I recall). And I believe this is Multnomah based on what I saw in google maps. The light wasn't too good this day but at least it wasn't sunny to create DR issues. Ample amount of dehaze needed here,

 

[AlanLichty]

Nice looking falls Alan. Good use of the drone to get this view. Have you tried a lower view point with the drone - essentially like standing in the water in the pool and shooting?

Thanks Jameel - my goal in framing this shot was to get the conjunction of the two creeks in the view so in this case the water on the right (Sweet Creek) and Beaver Creek on the left. I did take more images up much higher on the left to include a pool in Beaver Creek with a small waterfall at the back (not visible in this shot). This is a pretty tight spot to fly and there are branches directly behind and below my drone and I had obstacle warnings on the screen while I was shooting. I could have pulled in a little closer to the falls and down a bit but would have lost the fall colors on the sides.

 

[John Holbrook]

My offering for today is a shot from last week of Beaver Creek Falls. This is a spot a couple of miles upstream from the Sweet Creek waterfall trail where Beaver Creek dumps into Sweet Creek. The viewpoint for Beaver Creek Falls is well off to one side buy the terrain doesn't allow for other points of view so I decided to send my camera out over the water and launched my drone. A bit of careful maneuvering got me a viewpoint out in front of the falls but was still limited by the forest canopy directly behind the drone.

I have been playing around with how to get good waterfall images from a drone and came up with the notion of trying to create a shutter speed simulation by using burst mode on the camera (5 shots in this case) and then calculate the number of images to blend based on the shutter speed - 1/15s in this case. I used the assumption that each subsequent image I added to the stack halved the shutter speed so 3 images would be similar to 1/3.75s and with the interval between each shot I could call this approximately 1/4s. No clue whether those assumptions are realistic but I liked the result better than just stacking all 5 shots from the burst.

View attachment 53968

Very nice image and well executed editing.

 

[AlanLichty]

My contribution is a distant view of the Multnomah falls from the Washington side using a long lens (100-400 with a 1.4x if I recall). And I believe this is Multnomah based on what I saw in google maps. The light wasn't too good this day but at least it wasn't sunny to create DR issues. Ample amount of dehaze needed here,

I believe you are correct about the falls - this would be the view of Multnomah from the Cape Horn overlook. Nice view.

 

[AlanLichty]

Very nice image and well executed editing.

Thanks John!

 

[Ben Egbert]

Thanks for starting this Alan. Now that you have figured out how to use a drone for loner looking shutters, you have the great advantage of getting to positions otherwise impossible. This is one of your best waterfalls.

My offering this week. Another AF River image.

 

[Jameel Hyder]

I believe you are correct about the falls - this would be the view of Multnomah from the Cape Horn overlook. Nice view.

This is not from the Cape Horn overlook. Much further West on 14 - I don't recall the name of the side road I took for this.

 

[AlanLichty]

Thanks for starting this Alan. Now that you have figured out how to use a drone for loner looking shutters, you have the great advantage of getting to positions otherwise impossible. This is one of your best waterfalls.

My offering this week. Another AF River image.

Another nice one from that river - can't say that I ever shot it when I lived in SLC.

 

[Ken Rennie]

Wailing Widow Falls. This was the first time that I had been able to cross the stream without getting very wet although it required a lot of care and the use of 2 walking poles. This is a multi shot mean merged image. My computer is creaking as it tries to handle the 13GB file. While at the site I noticed that my filters were fogging up as well as getting coated in spray. Cleaning them removed the spray for a while but the filters fogged up again almost instantly, the worst was the inside of my polariser. So lots of shortish images combined in photoshop. I think that it was worth it and I would have been very annoyed if I had not noticed the fogging until later. Ken

Here is a quick mono conversion.

 

[AlanLichty]

Wailing Widow Falls. This was the first time that I had been able to cross the stream without getting very wet although it required a lot of care and the use of 2 walking poles. This is a multi shot mean merged image. My computer is creaking as it tries to handle the 13GB file. While at the site I noticed that my filters were fogging up as well as getting coated in spray. Cleaning them removed the spray for a while but the filters fogged up again almost instantly, the worst was the inside of my polariser. So lots of shortish images combined in photoshop. I think that it was worth it and I would have been very annoyed if I had not noticed the fogging until later. Ken

Here is a quick mono conversion.

A really nice result - in both versions although I lean towards the color myself. Glad you caught the fogging issue while you were still there. I ran into a similar problem last week in Oregon's coastal mountains and had to wipe the lens off before each shot.