Long Exposure Waterfall Photography with Your iPhone
DSLR Days
It’s 2006 and I am in the northern Blue Ridge Mountains, hiking up 2-miles from the camping site to capture my first long exposure shot of a waterfall. In my camera backpack, I had my first DSLR with several lenses, several natural density (ND) filters, and a full-size tripod in my hand.
Once I got there, it took me a while to set up the tripod, select the appropriate ND filter, and then wait for the rest of the visitors to clear the camera’s view. I spent close to an hour and returned extremely happy since all my shots looked amazing on the tiny LDC screen on the camera.
When I got back home, viewing the shots on the bigger laptop screen, it was unfortunate to see that most of the shots were shaken since the tripod couldn’t do its job in slippery, muddy, or windy scenarios. I soon realized how many variables are there and how it is not that easy as it seems to accomplish these shots.
iPhone Takeover
Fast forward 17 years, now I am in the southern part of the Blue Ridge Mountains in North Carolina, with only my iPhone 15 Pro Max in my pocket - no backpack, no tripod. My phone is even guiding me through the hiking trail.
Once I got there, I simply put the camera in Live Photo mode, and snapped as many shots as I wanted, handheld! I was very much out of the way of other visitors and was even able to get to unique spots for better angles of the cascade.
All I had to do was simply enable the ‘Long Exposure’ effect on Live Photos, and voilà, perfect long exposure waterfall shots every time!
What is a Live Photo
In 2015, along with the introduction of the iPhone 6s, Apple introduced us to Live Photos - which record 1.5 seconds before and after you capture a photo. This is recorded into a video, even with sound, and packages everything together. You can select the key photo afterward.
This felt like the next paradigm shift in digital photography to us. So, it was extremely important for us to implement Live Photos from the start into Camera M during its development.
Why Camera M for Live Photos?
The native camera app is perfectly capable of capturing Live Photos, so why use Camera M?
The answer in short is — manual controls.
Camera M allows manual focus, exposure, and white balance which you can easily adjust for a Live Photo. You can use the ‘Fine-Tuning’ feature for granular adjustments by moving the touch away from the gauge during an adjustment.
How about the powerful tools? Focus peaking, 4x magnifier loupe, highlight and shadow alerts, live RGB histograms, and manual gray card white balance are a few to name.
Shoot it Hand-Held
The beauty of Live Photos is that you can shoot them while hand-held. No tripod is necessary. Just make sure you are holding it as steady as possible for the sharpest results, but it is easily achievable.
Our Preferred Settings
Our favorite way to shoot cascading waterfalls is to find a unique spot and expose the scene to the moving water. Most of the time, this ends up having to underexpose from the default. You can do this in three different ways:
Tap on water to use Tap-to-Expose
Adjust the exposure bias down to a negative number
Open the Exposure Screen (aka. Split Screen) and explicitly adjust ISO and exposure duration to desired levels.
Make sure the focus is set to where the closest cascading body of water is.
We prefer the white balance to be warmer than the default to bring a more ‘dreamy’ quality to the scene.
How to Apply Long Exposure Effect
Since Live Photo effects only be applied from the native Photos app, simply view within the Photos app and tap on the top left to apply the ‘Long Exposure’ effect as seen below:
Apple uses machine learning frameworks to align and merge multiple frames to create this look. This action is non destructive, you always will be able to remove or change the effect.
Final Result
(Learn more about capturing Live Photos from the official Apple website)
Few Cons
The final photo is in 9 MP resolution instead of 12.
Some of the advanced processing such as Deep Fusion and SmartHDR might not be applied to the final photo.
Only HEIF or JPEG, no RAW or ProRAW option, at least not yet.
