this weekend before the july 4 craziness, I found myself in the mountains just south with my brother. cameras in hand. useless against bears. but nice to have otherwise.
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5280 Lens Mafia 
I’d give anything for a waterfall like this around here. Gorgeous shot. Again, guessing: f-stop and ISO screwed all the way down, maybe a two second exposure? The water isn’t silky, but it’s getting there.
It was an f10 @ 1/15. No filter. In shadow. I did a number of them, with the longer exposures giving me more silky, but less definition of the underlying rocks … I felt that lost the sense of shape I was looking for. The ones with a faster shutter speed (above 1/15) lost most of the interest because there was no form to the water … it all appeared as a jumble. I’ve discovered that there’s a wide range of desired water:
1. Get it ghosting. Very nice, most times. [1/15 and slower]
2. Get it as we usually do with a midrange exposure, and it just looks like water, and the shape’s jumbled. Very boring. [1/30 to 1/500]
3. Get it absolutely frozen. [1/1000 and higher, usually higher]
What’s interesting is that the middle-boring range is what we mostly shoot. To get moving water frozen, or the ghosting, we really have to deliberately go to the far ends of the exposure continuum. Tripod use is absolutely critical.
There cannot be any recommended time that will always work. Water moves at different speeds. The creek water is slower than the waterfall. The top of the waterfall is a different speed from the bottom … the speed of the water bouncing off a rock is different from the falling water.
The thing is that that f-stop is not that important. The effect is all determined by the shutter speed you use (with appropriate f-stop). And unfortunately, the average or boring image of water comes around at nearly any normal, sensible setting we would usually use.
Shoot a lot of images at different very low and/or very high speeds, depending on the result you want.
Don’t be boring.
After looking at my shots of the same waterfall, I’d say that some attention should be paid to f-stop. Since the contrast between the blurred moving water and still surroundings creates a good bit of the drama (in my opinion), having a decent depth of field seems important to provide the crisp surroundings. Most of my shots had narrower depth of field and it feels like a mistake/lost opportunity. Beautiful place.