Originally posted by mddolson
Thanks for repying:
My photos had lots of specks and spots and apparent "bubbles" in them?
They were also very dark, but I figured that was wrong choice of film (iso 200,came with camera) or just out of range.
Mike
Ok...
(1) specks & spots & "bubbles"
(a) distance - 9 times out of 10, beginners try to shoot way too far from the camera. For the 3e, for fish, you need to be able to get to within 2 to 4 feet of the subject. Remember that things appear closer under water, so a fish that appears to be three feet away is really four feet away. The further away the subject, the more "stuff" in the water will be in the picture. The eye/brain tends to ignore this stuff when we're looking at something, because we see what we want to see, and because the relative motion of stuff in front of or behind what we're looking at helps us to mentally block it out - but it's all picked up by the film, and it's all frozen.
(b) flash co-located with lens. The onboard flash is too close th the lens except for *very* close shots or *extremely* clean water. Because of this, every tiny little piece of junk reflects the flash back to the lens and makes a little "bubble" in your photo.
(2) darkness - almost certainly a case of "too far" from the objects.
Your next investment should be the slaved strobe for the 3e (if you get it off ebay make sure you get the flash deflector for the housing along with it).
In the meantime, get close, get close, get close. After you're used to getting close enough, then we can tackle angles, backgrounds and composition.
Good luck.
Rick
