Glaring flash

[SteveC]

Ok, lets see if this works.

 

[SteveC]

I finaly got it to work. These pictures show the problem under water. The housing is home made. I'll post a picture of it too.

 

[diversteve]

Looks like backscatter - but an extreme amount of it at least in the second photo. Is there still glass in the frame in that photo? Maybe you were getting a reflection of the backscatter off it also.

Getting an external strobe would help. The basic idea is to get the flash off the same plane as the camera lens so that the particles don't reflect the light back to the lens.

 

[Gilligan]

hmmmm.... I guess it didn't work.

Steve,
you can get a free account at flickr.com to post your photos on. It is a great site. Yahoo bought it so if you have a Yahoo mail account you can use the same password.

 

[Gilligan]

If you are using a homemade housing, did you isolate the lens area from the strobe area?

My Olympus PT-010 as a black rubber "tunnel" in ide the housing that the lens opens into.

 

[cudachaser]

The back scatter is caused by the strobe on the camera being on the same plane as the camera lens. The particles in the water act as mirrors reflecting back the light.

I use an external strobe positioned on a different plane then the lens, however I found the camera strobe which triggers the external strobe contibuted to backscatter so I blackened out the housing's diffuser faceplate. The external strobe still sees the light from the camera strobe...but the camera strobe doesn't project to the subject.

 

[Thalassamania]

Backscatter (if that's what it is) can be limited by getting close, keeping the strobe-subject-camera angle at 45 degrees and, at a rather high cost in f/stops, polarizing filtration at the strobe and the lens. Range gating is a great technology for solving this problem but I don't think it's made it to consumer (or even professional) cameras yet.

 

[SteveC]

I can't really remember if there is glass in the frame or not. I don't think so though.
I believe I have the lens isolated from the flash. At least there is no glare on surface pictures.

 

[clgsamson]

Is this a case of the strobe on top or near the lens port when it fired?

 

[SteveC]

http://www.scubaboard.com/gallery/data/533/thumbs/100_8049.jpg
http://www.scubaboard.com/gallery/data/533/thumbs/100_8046.jpg
http://www.scubaboard.com/gallery/data/533/thumbs/100_8046.jpg

Here are some photos of my housing.
The flash is on the camera and yes it is right next to the lens. I'm going to stop fighting the flash and just add a control to turn it off. (it comes back on automaticaly after a couple minutes)