Difficulty taking photos in good conditions

[Hetland]

I usually dive the central Gulf Coast, where water is usually green, sand-filled, and generally bad for photography. Last year, I vacationed in Lauderdale, and had a good deal of difficulty shooting in clear, light-filled water. My night shots turned out okay, but I was disappointed in the vast majority of my daytime shots. Specifically, I had a lot of shots where I needed my strobe to fill in for the lost colors (reds, etc), but because there was plenty of ambient light on the subject, my camera and/or strobe thought the shot was just dandy. As a result, I had a lot of shots with no red/lots of green or shots that were embarrassingly over-exposed.

I shoot a Canon G11. 99% of the time I'm in AV mode between f2.8 and f4, ISO 80 or ISO 100. I have an INON D2000 with diffuser that I shoot on sTTL mode with a fiber-optic. I used to use Auto mode on the 2000, and encountered the same problems in clean, well-lit water.

Any help from you guys would be greatly appreciated.

Regards,
h

 

[Bubbletrubble]

You are describing a lighting issue.

Can you force a flash on your G11? With your setup, this should cause your external strobe to fire.

On a separate but related issue, your aperture is probably too wide open with external strobe lighting. Experiment with stopping down the aperture a little. This will increase the depth of field which will probably make for more pleasing wide-angle shots anyway.

Be patient with this. You may have to experiment a little in Manual mode.

Good luck and let us know how it goes...

 

[Larry C]

I had the same problem on my first tropical trip with the camera. Typically, if you're diving in clear bright water, you need to be able to crank up the shutter speed or the aperture. 1/125 @ f5.6-f8 are common tropical settings for point and shoot cameras. If your camera won't compensate, try shooting manual. Start by setting your shutter speed faster till you get the blue water that you want. Then adjust your aperture so the whole shot is good. Let your strobe light the foreground, and your background will still look good. If you're shooting macros, you can crank up both shutter and aperture and add strobe till your lighting is good on the subject.
Look here Underwater Photography & Video: DivePhotoGuide.com for a lot of help on details.

 

[Tienuts]

1st issue - make sure you are close enough for your strobe to bring out color. The D2000 is good until about 6-8 feet, depending on conditions. If your subject is further away than this, don't bother taking the shot.

2nd issue - your camera is controlling the exposure in every mode except manual. A common mistake is for people to put the camera in Av mode, and put it on an aperture setting they read about, or their friend told them. Even if you put it in f8, the camera will compensate by lowering the shutter speed to make what it thinks is a correctly exposed shot. Remember, the camera is designed for topside shooting. It doesn't know it's underwater.

Good underwater shots with a strobe are actually underexposed shots, where the ambient light is reduced to create the darker blues, and the strobe fills in the colors of your foreground subject. I recommend for those shooing the G10/11 put it in aperture priority, select f8 in clear water, and use the E/V compensation dial on the left side to control the background. Underexpose your shots, let the flash do the work.

These shots were taken using an S90, (which is very similar to the G11,) using Av, TTL on an Inon S2000 (same power as the D2000) and by varying the exposure compensation using the E/V dial.