Canon A720IS Housing shadows in corner, flash diffuser questions?

[sasscuba]

Have not been able to go below to take shots yet but with my A720IS and Canon housing above water I get the black shaded area in the lower right corner in pics without the flash diffuser.

Is using the flash diffuser the only way to get rid of the blocking flash black area?

Does using a flash diffuser cut down on the intensity of the flash or does it do only what it implies and just diffuse light?

If you could get a good shot underwater with using flash and you get the black corner, would using the diffuser result in the same picture without the black corner but slighly darker or would you get the same picture?

Will have many more questions about settings later but any help is much appreciated to this photo newbie!

26 years of diving and this will be the first underwater stills I have ever taken, wish I would have started earlier.

Thanks Scott.

 

[diver 85]

See my PM answer to you, I would assume all the problems with a dark area is using no diffuser, ie I have never had a dark area in any of my pics(with A570) & have used the diffuser 100% of time....now saying that, I have never seen a 720 before(in or out of a housing) & am assuming the cameras will be close to the same shape & size......

 

[Rickg]

See my PM answer to you, I would assume all the problems with a dark area is using no diffuser, ie I have never had a dark area in any of my pics(with A570) & have used the diffuser 100% of time....now saying that, I have never seen a 720 before(in or out of a housing) & am assuming the cameras will be close to the same shape & size......

Scott,

I, like diver85, use the the diffuser for all of the pictures I take with the in-camera strobe otherwise the barrel of the camera/housing will obstruct the lower right hand portion of the picture. It just boils down to physics of the strobe and the camera/housing design.

You will also find that if you try to shoot really close macro stuff even using the diffuser won't prevent you from ending up with a darker area in your pictures. A partial solution to this is to back up a bit and then use the optical zoom to adjust for the additional distance between you and the subject but that only works up to a point. The only way to avoid this completely for the really close up stuff is to invest in an external strobe but I'm not ready at this point to shell out the bucks for that because I'm pretty happy with what I've been able to do with the just the camera and its internal strobe. I'll post some more Sipadan pictures later today when I've got some more time.