for beginners - strobe positioning

[the_cat_keeper]

Seems like if I could get as close as possible to the subject, the picture can't turn out too badly? There would colours, minimal backscatter and the subject fills the frame.

such images can be easily corrected in photoshop

Going off the discussion a little, I've read a number of posts on using photoshop to enhance the pictures... everyone seems to be doing that... Is photoshop the answer to a good picture? Is there anyone who don't use photoshop at all?

 

[Chris Bangs]

Photoshop can improve a good shot by removing backscatter, correcting color, and even a bit of sharpening. It is not a magic wand, therefore if the shot is poor, out of focus, severely under or over exposed, photoshop will not resurrect it from the cutting room floor.

 

[Peter McGuinness]

One tip is unless you are shooting macro and a subject is very close to the camera, keep the strobe pointed parallel with the lens, do not try to aim the strobe at the subject as doing so will result in more of the beam striking the water in front of the subject. I use real wide beam ( 110 degree ) strobes, and in dirty water I even point them slightly outward. I also use two strobes in most cases and my goal is to have each beam strike the subject with just enough overlap to expose the entire frame.

Chris, I am finding this discussion very interesting, so thanks for leading it. Your answer above begs another question: why such wide angle strobes if you are pointing them away from the subject? I imagine that narrower beams would be more efficient in the sense that less powerful strobes could do the same job. This becomes interesting if it means I can buy smaller and lighter (possibly cheaper) strobes.
This is quite important to me because I do a lot of surf entries, so compact, mangeable equipment is a must.

I am sure that there is a direct relationship between beam angle, distance of throw, and power of strobe. Since I am about to get a strobe for my Canon, would I be restricting myself needlessly if I went for the most compact strobe, and what would be the downside of going for a narrow beam angle?

Thanks,
Peter

 

[Mike Veitch]

Hi Peter, don't mean to hijack Chris's thread but i can throw some light on this for you (pun intended).

The problem with narrow beam strobes is that they are narrow. This is fine if you want to do macro work only. However, in wide angle you need to cover a lot more area and therefore need wider angled strobes. When using a narrow strobe it won't be able to cover such things as sea fans and other larger objects. You will light up the middle but not the edges, therefore taking away the impact from your photos. Both wide and narrow strobes will get the middle but only the wides will get the edges. More importantly for your question, if you are in murky conditions when you need to turn the strobes slightly out, the wides will be wide enough to get the middle of the subject whereas you may not get the overlap with narrows and therefore have a dark spot in the middle of the photo, not good.
If you went for compact strobes with narrow beams and low power, i would think that you will find the limitation of these quickly and would then want to move to a better strobe in the near future. Do yourself a favour and get a good powerful strobe now so you don't need to needlessly spend more money in the future.
As for the actual size of the strobes vs width of beam for your purposes, have a look at Inon Strobes. These are a very compact strobe that has a wide beam.
If i didn't already own a bunch of strobes, i would probably go with Inons due to their compactness and power.

 

[Chris Bangs]

thanks Mike

you said it all for me!

just got back online after a major computer crash. hope to get back up to speed soon.


chris

 

[Peter McGuinness]

Hi Peter, don't mean to hijack Chris's thread but i can throw some light on this for you (pun intended).

Thanks, Guys.
I'm off to buy a strobe!
Peter

 

[Mike Veitch]

just got back online after a major computer crash. hope to get back up to speed soon.


chris

Whoa! Hope you didn't lose any photos.

 

[Chris Bangs]

Thanks Mike

no worries!

I make Triple back ups ( and even more on the prime stuff ) seperate drives, CDR/DVD

mitsui or Kodak Gold media for archiving.

 

[Chris Bangs]

also keep full sets in Japan as well as Guam. the old off site storage thing, so even if my office goes up in flames, still have my images.

the big film disadvantage! if not scanned, can only have one true copy.

 

[Peter McGuinness]

Well, I got myself a tray and strobe for my canon. Several hundred dollars poorer, I took it down to La Jolla to play with the new toy. Got myself several really crappy, crappy, crappy pictures!

Actually, to be fair to myself, I did get two pictures I thought were OK, and most of the reason I was disappointed is that I found nothing really very interesting to photgraph, but there is a lot to work on.

When you were starting out, how did you get a handle on the variables? Did you just set most of the parameters to some fixed value and work with one variable at a time?

Peter