Other than going back on a cloudy day, do you folks have any tricks for handling extreme brightness variation? I tried to at least keep the sky out of the frame. Used different shutter speeds to affect the motion blurring differently. Took "normal" exposure and "1-1/2 under" and tried combining in Photoshop. Still, did not really capture the entire flavor of this little falls. Missed entirely the fine mist of sparklies all the way down to hitting the water. I think these shots are kind of neat in their own way, but not really how I wanted them to turn out. The colors have been cranked up some on photoshop. Some of these have a fair amount of dodging and burning selected areas. Originals were taken on Fuji Superia Realia 100.

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I'm sorry, I found it hard to pick out just what in the pictures actually was the waterfall. Which, I'm afraid, leaves me thinking you have more than just exposure as a problem. As you may have noticed, I tend to go for older tech, and back in the fifties of the last century, contrast range for colour film was less than for monochrome, and the manual for a Weston meter recommended concentrating on colour difference, rather than brightness difference. There are some good colours in these pictures, but I'd certainly use a longer lens, and rotate the camera through 90 degrees for a portrait format shot. Sorry, don't recognise the film name. Print or transparency? I'm reluctant to suggest taking advantage of alternative exposure/processing options for transparency film, but the do affect contrast, and so might help. Screen resolution isn't enough to judge things such as motion blur and depth of field, but I do know that the "sparklies" from falling water can be very different with motion blur.

Misha - Hmmmm ... never had this situation before. Normally, I'd slap a circular polarizer on the lens first to pop the colors a bit more, but that will probably minimize some of the sparkly mist you want to capture. I don't know how well you'll be able to capture the sparkling mist with the shutter speeds you're going to need to use to get good detail in the rocks and parts of the shot that are in shadow. Have you tried going for even longer exposures? Try adding a 2-stop neutral density filter and then taking two shots (one exposed for the shadowed waterfall, one for the sunlit area). I have no idea if any of that helps, it's out of my knowledge-base. -=>Donald

I don't know if this will help either ... with a good tripod and if the camera allows it, how about trying a double exposure -- lots of shots to allow bracketing. MGD