East Timor : Nov. 25 - Sunball experiments

[Jamdiver]

Stunning as always Nick!!

Just love the blues in your photos.
My favourite sunbursts would have to be pic 4 and the second to last shot, love how the rays are sharp and crisp.

 

[Wolverine]

Great shots! what setting was the camera on for the sunball shots?

 

[calypsonick]

Thanks all for the nice comments.

LarryC - Yeah, I was scratching my head on that one, wondering how the pros get nice dark silhouettes of divers in the background. I think it has to do with the angle of the light. I will try PS but I am not very adept at anything beyond the basics.

Gilligan - Four kids were hanging out watching us gear up and then followed us into the water to see what we were doing. The situation here is still a bit tenuous but the international security forces can contain disturbances quickly. The key is not to be caught in a flare up. Still has us a bit stressed - thank goodness for diving!! Thanks for asking.

Wolverine - Alcina gave me some good tips on this. With my strobes only synching with my camera at a max 1/125s, I used a small aperture of f22 to try and capture the rays. With such a small aperture, I had to put the strobes up close to the subject to get enough light on it. Too close and too far out front of the dome port and I was getting some funky reflections in the inside of the dome. Always learning..........

 

[Larry C]

Nick, do you mind if I play with the shot in photoshop? I've been working on isolating picture parts with the magnetic lasso and adjusting and reblending them. I'd like to see if I can strengthen the swimmer without altering the rest of the shot.

 

[calypsonick]

Nick, do you mind if I play with the shot in photoshop? I've been working on isolating picture parts with the magnetic lasso and adjusting and reblending them. I'd like to see if I can strengthen the swimmer without altering the rest of the shot.

Larry, be my guest and you can tell us how it goes.

 

[pakman]

Nick, great shots... Just happens that Dan Groshung who did the photos (topside and u/w) for the "Timor-Leste: Land of Discovery" coffee table book is a member of our local dive club.. After seeing the great photos you've been posting and talking with Dan, East Timor is slowly climbing up on my "must dive" spots in Asia...

Tim - Dan was that guy on our dive boat last week...

 

[Larry C]

Larry, be my guest and you can tell us how it goes.

Here's what I came up with.

Hope you like it.

 

[calypsonick]

Wow, you got nice contrast into the swimmer. It really brings out the sun's highlights. Neat! You mentioned using the lasso tool, can you give me a quick summary of what you did ?

 

[Larry C]

Carefully magnetic lassoed the swimmer (you can left click repeatedly to make corners so it doesn't cross over the main subject edges) Double click to set the lasso area. Went to "Image Adjustments" and altered brightness and contrast, then used the "Auto Levels" to let PS7 do its best try. Double click inside the lasso to finalize the alteration. Then, I had to blend the overrun where the water didn't match, because you can't get a perfect lasso. (It helps if you zoom the picture to where you only have the area you're working with) I used the healing brush (bandaid) at 80% hardness, only big enough to cover the bad part. Alt click on the area you want to match, then click or click and drag the part you want to change. I had some problems with dark or light areas bleeding from the surroundings so when I finished, I did the same thing with the clone stamp to fix my mistakes. Took about 5 minutes. With real time and care, you could do a much better job. I left a bit of a halo in places. Generally, you click on the tool you want, then go to the picture area and right click to set the parameters. Alt click ID's the source and double click to finalize. If you screw up, go to edit and just undo the last action. If you've passed it, go to edit and step backward till you're where you want.