Critic waterfall.

[Nepto]

I am new at photography. I took this shot with a Canon SD1200IS. I know the SD1200 is only a point and shoot, but how could I have made this shot better. The water blur seems very unpolished. I took the shot late afternoon. Camera set to auto.

[dakwegmo]

Without having the EXIF data avaialble it's tough to give exact recommendation. However, just from what I can see I can make a guess. It looks like you're using an intermediate shutter speed, probably somewhere between 1/4th to 1/60th of a second. These speeds are less than ideal for water, because they don't exactly freeze the motion of the water, but they don't completely blur it either. So you're left with water that's slightly sharp, slightly blurry. Ideally you want to either completely blur it, or completely freeze it which require shutter speeds on either side of this range.

[Nepto]

Hi Marcus:

Canon SD1200IS set to auto. (3x optical, 4x digital, 12x combined zoom, which gives the photographer anywhere from 35 to 105mm zoom)
ISO 125
1/60
F2.8
Auto white balance.

[navcom]

Dakwegmo is right. Your settings are not ideal for waterfalls. Don't feel too bad. There are very few P&S cameras that can capture a good waterfall. The reason is they are designed to be more "automatic" than an SLR is. While you can manually set them a bit, your ranges are usually a bit limited and the camera may still try to make settings for you even in manual mode. This doesn't mean it's a bad camera...just designed for a different use.

To capture a waterfall (either blurred or tack sharp), you need to turn off the auto modes and work with your shutter speed and aperture directly. For blurred water, you need at least a 1 second shutter speed. For sharp you really should have 1/500th minimum or so.

As for the aperture, you should set that for depth of field. The smaller the size of the aperture (larger the f/stop number), the larger your depth of field is. Ideally you should be using something in the f/8 to f/13 range for the best trade-off between DOF and image quality (quality can suffer at the extreme ends of your aperture range).

If you are looking for the classic motion blur you see in so many waterfall photos, you usually need a neutral density filter. You won't be able to get the camera to produce a slow enough shutter speed during the day to get the blur effect. A neutral density filter is like putting sun glasses on your camera (non-polarized that is)...it darkens the camera and forces a longer shutter speed. They usually don't change the light quality, just the light intensity.

Another tip for waterfalls....if possible, shoot on rainy days when the clouds are overcast and the ground is wet (be careful of course!). The clouds act as a diffuser and the wet surfaces increase your color saturation. In this case, you might want to try a circular polarizing filter as well.