Getting the right shutter speed for motion

Garrapata Beach. 5D Mk III, 70-200 f4 L IS, 1.3 sec at f/13

With neutral density filters you can get the shutter speed you want at almost any time of day, on this very bright morning at Garrapata I used a 6 stop filter on a 70-200 f/4 L IS lens to isolate the rocks and show movement in the waves. 

It takes a while in the morning for the sun to get over the hill behind the beach, so when it arrives its pretty intense in the summer, holding back the light with a neutral density filter helped to cut down on that very bright sun and give me the shutter speed I wanted to show some motion in the waves without completely smoothing out the water.

I could have used a 10 stop filter but the effect would have been more than I wanted, by using aperture priority I could have easily gone to 30 seconds and completely smoothed out the ocean, but I was looking for crashing waves with a small amount of motion to show the interaction with the rocks.

I have found for slight motion in waves .6 to 2 seconds is a pretty good rule of thumb to use depending on wave height and light conditions.

Ross

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