The rain this Spring and melting snow from winter made for some spectacular waterfalls in numerous Southern Utah locations this year. I am still editing images but this is another one of my water image favorites.

Feature Image Details

• EOS R5 Mirrorless Camera
• Canon 16-35MM F4 L Lens at 35 MM
• 10 Seconds, F16, ISO 100

Discussion

This image is from March 16, 2023.

In bright sunshine, 10 seconds is a very long time. I achieved that with a polarizer plus a 6-stop neutral density filter. Each stop doubles or halves the exposure.

For example, if the normal exposure was 1/32 of a second, six stops would be 1/16th, 1/8th second, 1/4th, 1/2, 1 second, 2 seconds.

Normal exposure on this image would have been something close to 1/125 of a second. To get to 10 seconds is at least 8 stops of neutral density.

I also focus stacked this image, focusing once on the foreground and once on the background, blending a couple of the best exposures.

By mid-April most of the water in these pools was gone. They typically only hold water in late Winter or early Spring.

Other Many Pools Images

I used a much faster shutter speed on this image, about 1/20th of a second, with a polarizer. I would have preferred longer, but a moving rainbow looked like a mush of colors.

Be careful with polarizers with rainbows. Rotated the wrong way, a polarizer will eliminate a rainbow.

The apex of a rainbows is 180 degrees from the sun. Thus, the light was at my back. At Many Pools, assuming there is water and most of the time there isn’t, this is a shot at 3:00 PM.

This is an easy hike but uphill on the way in. It’s about a mile each way to the waterfall.

Equipment

Those interested in my equipment and recommendations can find it here: Mish’s Equipment List.

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Please check out my previous post, also on Zion, Lower Emerald Pools – Zion National Park Waterfall. If you are researching locations in Zion, try the search feature. It work very well.

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Mike “Mish” Shedlock