Small Cascade

A little experimentation here, with a stack of 13 fairly short exposures to try and get that silky feel to the water.

When taking the photo I held the camera on a post on the bridge, since I'd left the tripod behind on this occasion.  I disabled autofocus and image stabilisation, cranked up the aperture and cranked down the ISO to get about 2 seconds per image and just let it keep firing until the buffer was full.

When I got home I processed the photos all identically using a saved style in Darktable and then exported them all to jpg.

I edited the first file in the Gimp and then loaded all of the others in layers.  Using the first file as a base, and using the "Difference" mode for the layers, I manually aligned each layer against the base.

With all the layers aligned, I switched each layer to "Lighten only" mode, flattened the image, tweaked the colour a little and this is the result.  There are some minor artifacts around the edges which I could get rid of by carefully selecting just the watery bits from all but one image, but I think the general technique works well.

What do you think?

Next, I need to try this with my tripod and an intervalometer so I can get a steadier sequence...

Ireland   Wicklow   glendalough   stream