Crop could maybe be a bit tighter, but it's not easy getting a waterfall shot like this in broad daylight. I like it. :)

And by broad daylight I mean 7:30 at night. ;) Still quite nice.

Intriguing composition. But why the hell did you use such an open diaphragm with such a long exposure during a day scene? You could have attempted the f/16 rule to get a cleaner, less blown-up sky methinks. :)

It was broad daylight, there's no way I could have had a 30" shutter with f/6.3 without complete blowout. Even if I had gone down to f/16 I probably wouldn't have been able to achieve even a 1" shutter (not a long enough shutter for the "wispy" waterfall). What I did was use a 9 stop neutral density (ND) filter to help draw out my exposure so I could have that waterfall effect. The problem is that at anything smaller than f/6.3 the shutter times would have gotten REALLY long (they were already at 30" at that aperture anyway). The risk you take with long shutter speeds in daylight like this, is that the wind will pick up and trees will also blur, which is unwanted. So I needed to keep the shutter speed at least somewhat down, thus I had to open up the aperture to f/6.3. Now, if I owned a 3 or 6 stop ND filter, I would have used that instead and gotten the 4-10" shutter that would have been more ideal while also maintaining the smaller aperture.

At the same time, I didn't want to open the aperture TOO much as this lens (like most) is sharper between f/5.6-13. Larger than that and chromatic aberration becomes a problem, smaller than that and diffraction loses sharpness. I attempted the best balance of all worlds that I could accomplish.

As far as the sky being blown out, short of taking multiple exposures and blending them (aka HDR), there is no way around that. This camera is a respectable 14bit if I remember correctly, that is usually allocated across about 2-4 stops (if I remember correctly). A shot like this has well beyond 2-4 stops of difference between the darker shadows and the lightest sky. Within a single exposure, I could have darkened the sky by shrinking the aperture, as you suggest, but I would start losing darker details in the trees/rock (never mind the other issues outlined above). Short of taking multiple exposures and blending them, or using some kind of graded ND filter, it is typically not possible to have both the sky and ground properly exposed within a single frame. I don't own a graded ND filter yet (they're expensive and VERY hard to find in stock), so my only method at this point is multiple exposure.

Probably more than you were expecting for an answer. Every setting I used though was made with purpose.