Fly like an eagle ...and jellyfish from outerspace
- Thread starter cozcharlie
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cicopo
Contributor
My camera set up has 2 old Sea & sea strobes that fire at full power but after several similar results to yours up north I now turn them off for those distant shots. P mode often gets a better result since I can raise or lower the exposure when I edit the RAW files. The flash simply can't light things up that far out.
Great shots. The picture with the eagle lit by your strobes is stunningly beautiful. I am curious what your ISO setting was for the top two pictures? Recently I was advised to up mine to 300 to 400 for that type of shot. I have a ton of hammerhead shots from Cocos like those two and they look identical. I was at 120 or so.
Again, thanks for making my Friday morning quick view of Scubaboard enjoyable.
Rob
Again, thanks for making my Friday morning quick view of Scubaboard enjoyable.
Rob
OP
cozcharlie
Contributor
SECOND EDIT.
Thanks Cicopo. I kind of misled you. Didn’t even have strobes on for the group shot at a distance. I learned that lesson the hard way on a prior dive. This time for the groups I had one of my manual preset modes set up for ambient with no strobe. The grain you see in photos was probably from ISO and increased exposure in Lightroom. Kind of had shutter speed as low as I could get away with 1/80th , the aperture as open I thought if could get away with maintain depth of field (f 5.6) and clearly ISO was as high or higher than I could get away with at 250. I had decent results on another day but this day was overcast and the viz was poor by Cozumel standards (50 ft ish) and rays were probably 20 ft deeper.
I have thought about about switching modes away from manual for when it gets really crappy. Will try your P mode suggestion. Main thing is I am trying to avoid shooting ambient light at that depth when viz isn’t great. EDIT: Really think the the clouds may have been the biggest problem. Didn't have nearly the issues a few days earlier on a sunny day (but only saw rays one at a time
)
deepsea21
Contributor
Great photos! The best we ever got of a "flock" (what should we call it?) of Eagle Rays in late December was a pic taken diving the beginning of Cathedral down south at the first coral head most commonly drop on. Have to say, as cool as it is to see them in formation doing their thing there is nothing better than stumbling across one up close that is focused and is grabbing a Conch. I've was up close for the first time this latest trip in December and saw the rooting, we all hung low and watched it depart with its bounty but we didn't hear it crack it to eat it. As always, the greatest experiences for us drift diving are totally unexpected... Ya'll know what I mean.
pelsasser
Registered
What camera are you using? Most modern cameras can handle much higher ISOs than 250 without too much noise.
It definitely helps when shooting ambient light at depth to be able to shoot much higher
It definitely helps when shooting ambient light at depth to be able to shoot much higher
OP
cozcharlie
Contributor
it was a Sony RX 100 VII. Pretty new camera obviously, but still a compact. Basically been told ISO 400 on a compact is pretty much an absolute max, so maybe could have gone a little higher but I gather 400 would really be pushing it.
For Cozumel the day I took these shots there was a whole lot of particulate in the water up north. Would see it going by even shooting macro (autofocus kept trying to lock on to particulate lit by the focus light and not the macro subjects s few inches off the lens ). I know other places deal with it all the time but very unusual for here.
The farther eagle rays are probably almost 50 foot away in 50 foot viz. Life would have been easier if I could have gotten 15-20 feet closer but those eagle rays don’t like being chased so easier said than done. The rays appeared grainy to the naked eye without camera. Upping the ISO and having to ramp up exposure even with the ISO just made noise worse. I know ISO 250 isn’t particularly high—noise I got surprised me—assumed it was combination of ISO and particulate plus additional exposure. Pictures you saw actually had a significant amount of noise reduction -dehazing etc but the eagle rays themselves weren’t much better regardless of what Lightroom adjustments I tried (or didn’t try ).
I have actually had much clearer photos from another day with clearer water that started out almost black at ISO 100. That day I was set up for close encounters with strobes and was having to adjust on the fly for stuff much further away. I could make Lightroom adjustments to increase the light in those photos without it getting really grainy really fast like the ones in this post.
Was still nice to see eagle rays even if photos didn’t turn out. Will try a a day with better conditions and keep playing around with camera settings. Think water cleared up the following couple of days based on what I saw snorkeling, though Norte may have changed that—certainly didn’t get into water for snorkeling today .
Thanks for the suggestions/comments/help everyone.
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