Wave, Tahiti Nui’s Western Shore

We were on the western shore of Tahiti Nui watching the the waves break on a reef, quite a ways from the beach.  A strong wind was blowing from the beach out toward the waves, blowing a fine mist of water off the tops of the waves and out toward the Pacific.  The waves themselves were a beautiful shade of blue and a nice contrast to the darker blue of the surrounding water. It was the blue of the waves and the fine mist blowing off the crest of the waves that attracted me to this scene.

Due to the distance of the breaking waves, I needed a long lens. I used a Canon EF 70-300mm DO IS lens set at a focal length of 300mm. Thanks to the field of view crop of the Canon 10D camera body I was using, that gave me an equivalent focal length (in 35mm terms) of 480mm. I needed every bit of that reach to capture this photo.

It was a bright, sunlit scene, an ideal situation for using Basic Daylight Exposure (BDE) with no camera metering necessary.  I needed a fast enough shutter speed to freeze the waves, something along the order of 1/500 second or faster. The strong wind at my back was another reason to need a fast shutter speed. Whether the camera is handheld or on a tripod, a strong wind can move the camera/lens combination enough to blur the photo. With the right kind of IS lens (image stabilization), turning the IS on can help in the wind, but a fast shutter speed is still advisable.

BDE at an ISO setting of 100 and an aperture of f/8 would give me a shutter speed of 1/500 second.  But I didn’t want the bright white part of the waves to burn out (washed out and texture less), so I used a shutter speed of 1/1000 second (BDE minus one stop). I didn’t need to use the camera’s meter to nail the exposure.

A brief explanation of BDE is in this article and a detailed explanation of BDE (and advice on motion stopping shutter speeds) is in my new photography book.  An introductory set of articles on exposure can be found here.