The Falls

Over the last few weeks we've reviewed the three elements of the "Exposure Triangle" - aperture, shutter speed and ISO.  This waterfall image provides a good example to illustrate how these three elements come together to create an image.

The settings used to take this image were:
40mm at ISO 100, f/4.9, 1/2 second

• Aperture - at f/4.9 the camera is able to collect a lot of light to propertly expose this late afternoon image.  At only 40mm, we don't really see this wide aperture impact Depth of Field (DOF) too much.
• ISO - The wide aperture is providing enough light to keep the ISO down.  Low ISO equals low noise or grain in the capture.
• Shutter Speed - Despite being "wide open" the camera still required a half of second to capture the image.  In this case, however, that longer exposure provides a nice motion effect to the rushing water.  It also means that this shot had to be taken from a tripod and a wireless remote.  Hand holding was not an option.