Ths Shasui Falls Challenge - A Lesson In Waterfall Photography

The photo to above is my first attempt at photographing a raging waterfall from the very bottom. Everything setup beautifully on a tripod, wired remote connected, wide angle mouted, and all composed - except that I forgot to wipe the water mist off of the lens. This is quite a let-down when we downloaded everything from our camera (which only has a 2.5" screen) to the 17" Hi-Res MacBook Pro. The water spots on the lens are very visible.

Well, this picture (above), while an improvement is not very much better! This was the second trip out to the wild on the other side of Kanagawa Prefecture. I setup, then wiped, wiped, shot, shot, wiped some more, then shots as many as fast as possible - and this was the best I could get.
I ran into the same challenge at a second trip to Hiryu Falls this past week-end. At the top of the falls, the wind is blowing from the falls right at the lookout point.

This time I did not put the camera on

a tripod and had the sun in front of the subject/waterfall, so I just metered the light, dropped the shutter speed slightly and increased the f stop by one, then faced the waterfall with a dry lens and started shooting, then wiped with a lens tissue, and shot a couple more photos. I have also learned not to use a lens cleaning cloth, but lens tissues. This is because lens cloths do not absorb water very well.