Exercise Shutter speeds

In this exercise on shutter speeds I found a small but fast flowing waterfall to photograph. The camera was positioned on a tripod. I used my telephoto lens set to a focal length of 105mm(35mm equiv)
or 70mm on my Nikon D80. I set the camera on shutter speed priority to let the camera adjust the aperture. I found that on the very slow shutter speeds there was 'whiteout' on the highlights as the aperture was on it's minimum already and even with a tripod there was sensitivity to camera movement. I am going to purchase a remote to avoid touching the camera in these situations. On the fastest shutter speeds there wasn't enough light so I have brightened up the images using the options in the software (I'm just checking them with the windows media program)

 1/4000sec

 At high shutter speed the water looks frozen and gives a glassy hard image.

 1/1000sec

  1/500sec

 1/160sec

 At shutter speeds of 1/50 to 1/160 sec the image looks natural as the human eye would see it.

 1/80 sec

1/50 sec

 1/25sec

 As the shutter speeds get slower the water takes on a smoothed continuous look

 1/10 sec

  1/2 sec

I prefer the smoother images which to me have a less glassy jagged look and feel a more artistic impression of flow almost like a watercolour painting with a really 'wet brush'.