First time w/ s100/ikelite - not as positive as everyone else's experiences.

[bkopec]

First, thanks to those who helped with info in my s100 presets post (and to Kelli and Scott at Bluewater photo for answering several questions over email). I'll post a few pics soon, but I clearly don't know what I'm doing yet so hopefully my results will improve if I can get a few more questions answered.

I've read that the buttons on the Ikelite housing are a little stiff so I was prepared for this. Even so I felt like I had to press extremely hard to get some of the buttons to activate (this seemed to vary randomly both in and out of the water). I also experienced the problem of the buttons not activating at all. I tracked down a couple of forum posts w/ people complaining about the same thing and they seem to suggest the buttons can become locked down when the zoom is not in a neutral position. This doesn't make sense to me since that clearly doesn't happen w/ the camera outside of the case and I am positive that I was locked up even when the zoom wasn't touched at all. This was extremely annoying as it would randomly happen in the middle of my dives and keep me stuck in whatever setting I happened to be in (I wasn't changing settings much, but still got stuck w/ simple things like recording video and not being able to stop it, being stuck in or out of macro mode, flash on/off, white balance, etc.).

I had white balance set to ring function and it seemed to behave differently when I used my hand vs. a buddy's tank vs. the white sandy bottom. Sometimes the screen went red, sometimes black, sometimes light brownish. I wasn't too worried about this since I was shooting jpg and raw and planned to mess w/ white balance in post processing, but it was still frustrating to have it looking red and then have it get stuck and not be able to try to reset it at a different depth. Also, if I tried to do a quick video, it stayed red or whatever funky color it was locked into at the time (is it possible to adjust white balance of videos in post processing? That would definitely help).

For stills I was mostly using Av mode f5.6 - f8, iso100, flash on (the camera generally set shutter speed to 1/60). This was generally pretty solid whether I was in macro mode or not, although I did get a lot of "overly bright" shots (hot spots?) when shooting close (I was using a diffuser, but perhaps I need to reduce the flash power in those cases?). Most of the time I was unable to experiment with adjustments like this because my buttons were locked up. I also noticed that no matter how close I got (even just a few cm from a subject), w/ aperture at f8, I was unable to get the effect of having the subject in focus with a 'blurred' background. Is that possible w/out a macro lens?

For experimentation, I had my manual mode preset to f5.6, shutter 1/500 as many have suggested. Whether the flash was on or off, every picture in that mode came out essentially full black. A friend played w/ one in lighroom for a second and was able to get the black out and view the pic, but it still seems odd that it would do this. I must have a setting hosed up because even sitting here in the living room, I can change the shutter and aperture to essentially any combination of settings and I still get black pics.

Example pics coming soon, but hopefully you can help w/ my questions in the mean time. I definitely don't want to jump the gun and start considering a Recsea housing without fully understanding what's going on w/ my Ikelite.
Thanks!
Brian

 

[mozaik]

Hi Brian,

You are correct , on some Ikelite housings the buttons may be anywhere between a little stiff to very stiff. The solution is to change the rubber tips from the inside of the housing to the pointed ones that should come in the package. If you dont have these , you can contact Ikelite and they will send you some. Also , the more you use the housing , the better it gets.

White balance must be set on a white / gray card , one with no color whatsoever so your hand is a very bad idea and a tank is not bad but not perfect. I keep a a hotel key card which is white with black writing on , I punched a hole in it and I have it attached to my housing with a little string. Any similar solution will work , a good option is the Ikelite diffuser.

Yes , you can adjust white balance of video later in lightroom 4 , photoshop CS4/CS5/CS6 extended, or other professional video editing software. You can shoot videos with manual white balance and that is recommended.

A shutter speed of 1/60 sounds quite slow for close up shots with a flash , you may need to lower it to 1/125 or 1/250 to get your correct exposure. Using an external strobe will give you much better shots, especially as you have TTL ( not in M mode , biggest con of Canon cameras ) . If you are using the built in flash , it is weak anyway so use it at maximum power and use manual settings to expose the shot correctly.

Shutter of 1/500 and aperture of f5.6 will only usually work with an external strobe , you need a significant light source to shoot these settings , unless you are diving shallow in direct sunlight and then you will need to go even up to 1/800 and f/8.

Read my full review of this housing here:
https://www.housingcamera.com/Canon-S100-Underwater-Ikelite-Review-a/317.html

I will be happy to answer further questions if you post them here.

 

[chile7236]

the ike housing takes some getting used to but it works fairly well. for the time i had my S100, auto WB worked fine for everything i shot and it worked just fine. for the blurred background you're looking for, open up the aperture...

 

[bkopec]

Thanks for the quick feedback. mozaik, I read your response as well as your review and I have a couple more quick questions. For my manual mode setting, it still seems like I have something set wrong since I have to open up the aperture (f2.8) AND reduce the shutter speed to 1/8 to get any decent light to show up sitting in my fully lit living room w/ the flash on.

Also, I have seen others make this same statement from your review: "One trick is that the camera remembers the aperture and shutter speed value between modes so you can switch to Av , use the dial to set the aperture and switch back to manual." I didn't realize this at the time, so technically trying to use my manual mode preset was meaningless as it was just going to pickup whatever the last aperture setting was in Av mode. I guess it at least let me see the difference between 1/60 and 1/500 shutter speed. You also said 1/60 is a little slow for closeup w/ flash...maybe this is why I kept getting hot spots and overly bright backgrounds as opposed to the flash power. However, since I was mostly using Av mode I was stuck with the 1/60 setting it was picking for me. If I knew this at the time, I could have gone into Tv mode and changed to 1/125 and then gone back to manual to see if it helped. I was definitely surprised that most of my pseudo-wide angle shots of large areas of coral actually came out better than my bright red closeups that you can see in a couple of the pics. I was expecting more backscatter or blurr on the big stuff but even the really bad ones looked better than the super bright closeups.



You can see the brightness/redness in the closeups (even in the background of the anemone). And the pics from farther away don't have too much backscatter, even w/ the flash still on.

As I'm sitting here playing w/ my camera settings, I'm wondering how tiresome it would be to set shutter to front dial in manual mode, then just flip down one notch to Av mode to adjust aperture (again using front ring). It's literally two total extra button pushes vs. being able to just use the rear wheel to adjust aperture in M mode.

 

[shutsal]

You can see the brightness/redness in the closeups (even in the background of the anemone). And the pics from farther away don't have too much backscatter, even w/ the flash still on.

Good shots for your first time with the camera. You will almost never get the white balance correct underwater so assuming you are shooting in RAW post-processing is always necessary. Should make a huge difference for the colors in the photos.

As for the brightness, mess with the shutter-speed some more. It can be tough without a strobe but I generally shoot between 1/250 and 1/500 for macro and 1/60-1/80 for wide angle. If you are judging brightness based on the display under water, I strongly advise using the exposure histogram. What looks well exposed in the display under water will look over exposed when you look topside, but the histogram won't lie. Again, assuming you are shooting RAW darker images can always be exposed lighter in post processing but blown out pictures generally aren't fixable.

 

[Major Restriction]

Nice shots Brian.

RE: Black shots: The flash sync speed for most cameras is 1/200 or 1/250/sec. Any shutter speed higher than that will result in only part of the sensor to be exposed. If you set your camera to high speed sync (and your flash is capable) then you are able to get shutter speeds faster than normal sync speed, but at a loss of strobe power. Essentially the strobe fires in a series of bursts appearing to be continuous light, allowing more of the sensor to be exposed, but at the cost of power. Therefore, you can get shots with flash that are dark because of loss of strobe power relative to the distance to your subject (that is, you'd have to get closer to the subject to make up for the loss of power). Were the dark photos macro shots where your subject was very close (see shutsals's post)?. I've personally experienced dark shots using flash and high speed sync above water, but never tried high speed sync underwater.

Note that flash duration (at or below sync speed) is usually very fast (1/640/sec and faster, depending on power level set on the flash), so that should be sufficient to freeze your subject if the primary source of light on your subject is your flash.

Good luck and report back what you find!

More on high speed sync: High Speed Sync for Flash at Any Shutter Speed

 

[mozaik]

Hi Brian,

Your shots are quite decent for a first time user of this camera, especially with the built in flash.

Your big leap in performance will be as soon as you use an external strobe, its a night and day difference.

Now , the light is your living room is very dim, even if it looks lit to you, that is only because the human eye adjusts brilliantly to low light. I can tell you that I just did a pool photoshoot with the S100 in direct sunlight and even at f/8.0 and shutter 1/1600 my photos were on the edge of being over exposed. Of course the conditions change underwater depending on the sun , depth and clarity of the water.

Shooting in Av or Tv is very limiting underwater. The reason is the camera adjusts your exposure to the correct one no matter which setting you choose ( as long as it can do that ,i.e. not at the edge of the aperture or shutter speed ).
The way you can control the exposure in these modes is using the EV +/-, but then due to the cameras TTL function, the flash will adjust its power accordingly (unless you put it on force flash). When you shoot manual , you can control how much of the light will come from flash and how much from ambient light therefore generate the perfect shot.

If you close aperture and increase shutter speed while putting the flash at full power , you will get more flash light and less ambient light (near black background and strong colors on the object you're shooting, assuming its close enough for the flash to light it. )
If you open the aperture and reduce shutter speed while lowering your flashes power , you will get more ambient light ( blue water and less colors on the object ) .

Now , the challenge with the above is that the internal flash is not strong enough so you will need some amount of ambient light to have the picture exposed correctly.

Another thing you should remember is that when using the flash , you need to set white balance to Auto , otherwise , you will get a reddish middle on your shots as the flash will light it in normal colors.

Will be happy to answer further questions and hope I didnt confuse you, I did see some good replies on this thread.

 

[Interceptor121]

When you shoot macro or close ups every camera tends to do a poor job at metering and selects shutter speeds that result in clipped highlights
For macro (3-10 cm away from subject) you typically look at manual settings with ISO at 80 aperture at F8 and shutter speed around 1/500
With this you have to select a manual strobe power usually position two on canon does the job

The S series love to shoot at 1/60 and this results in motion blur most times as the camera is fairly pessimistic on exposure. If you must shoot in av I would take the exposure compensatin to -2/3 or even -1 this should give our faster shutter speed

 

[bkopec]

Ahh, yes I was definitely shooting far away when I switched to manual mode. I saw the black, took a couple more shots just to make sure, and then stopped. Playing around in my living room again, I can get a nice picture w/ those settings by shooting close to the subject rather than just shooting out into the middle of the room.

I did have the exposure set to -1 in Av mode and never tried -2/-3. I also noticed that in M mode, it seems to adjust the exposure automatically regardless of what my Av EV+/- was set at (there's a little meter in the lower right corner that goes up and down as I point at something dark vs. bright). Is this function normal for 'true' manual mode shooting? Or am I supposed to override it? I'm still trying to grasp the significance of shooting in manual mode as my current understanding is that one can adjust shutter speed and aperture on the fly. Ignoring white balance for a minute, when shooting w/out a strobe, is there more to shooting manual w/ this setup?

Thanks again for all the responses...it's one thing to read the manual and all the guides, but direct feedback to specific questions like this is invaluable. Was hoping to play in Lightroom a little bit to see how much I could improve my photos, but my discs got damaged in transit...hopefully get that set up soon.

 

[Interceptor121]

The camera does a poor job at metering anything close to be honest you have really to go manual
The camera has a number of safety overrides it for flash and exposure and will try to correct out settings if it thinks you are not aiming at the correct exposure
All this fe and se safety modes should be set to off in the menu