How to take photo's without post adjustments

[Ardy]

I have been a digital photographer for 5 years now. I use amongst others an Olympus E-520 as my underwater camera. Just got back from a great trip to Bali and I am sick of post production work. I use RAW and manual to get the best results I can but the out of the camera images just do not cut it.

How do you take photo's with a digital camera that DO NOT need post work?

 

[diver 85]

Lot's of predive prayer.......

 

[spt29970]

First you have to realize that when you don't shoot RAW, the camera applies a set of "post production" filters automatically. It does white balance, noise reduction, and sharpening among others. By shooting in RAW, you are telling the camera NOT to apply these filters, which means that you will have to do them after the fact. However, one of the big strenghts of shooting in RAW is that the default in-camera filters often don't work too well since they were developed and tuned for land based photography. However, in Photoshop, you can develop a series of presets that will automatically apply a series of filters that you like. For example you often have to boost the red channel or boost the contrast beyond what the camera thinks you want.

That being said, there are a number of standard things you can do to minimize the amount of of post-processing that you have to do. The most obvious is to get as close as possible to your subject to minimize the amount of water between you and your subject. This improves constrast and minimizes backscatter. You should also position your strobes properly edge light your subject without lighting up particles between the camera and the subject. Many people concentrate on macro photography since the close working distance lends itself naturally to these rules. If you are shooting wide angle and you want to minimize post processing you should stay quite shallow so that you get reasonable amount of natural light.

 

[spt29970]

Another trick is to shoot in the morning or the afternoon and keep the sun at your back. This reduces scattering from particles in the water which contribute to "haze" and improves contrast.

 

[DazedAndConfuzed]

If you want to have your subject have natural color as much as possible, that means you should minimize the external light as much as possible. One way to do that is use as fast a shutter speed as possible, something like 1/500sec. This still allows the full light from the strobe to hit the lens. You play around with the f-stop and ISO so your strobe could still light things up properly.

I have reasonable result on subject as far as 5 ft away with the camera's built in flash, with f1.8 and ISO 400.

 

[Ardy]

Thanks guys - I guess it is as Steve says I need to set up some presets (which i have done in the past). The end result is worth the work I guess I am just lazy but when you have 700 shots left after the first 'throwaway' pass it does get tedious.

Lwang - I can't set my shutter speed higher than 1/180 sec on flash.

Still I got some great shots of wonderpus and boxer crab so it was worth it.

 

[DazedAndConfuzed]

ack...plane shutter...I guess you can step down the lens as much as possible and let your flash or external strobe fire off with close to a full burst of light.

I did like post adjustment on 5 images and I got tired of it, of course, I didn't shoot raw, so I went though a complicated procedure of working in CMYK space. I used this technique many many years ago when memory size was low and shooting raw on my camera meant being able to put only a few pictures on the memory card.:

Getting Rid of the Underwater Blues :: Wetpixel.com


One thing is you can set your white balance at different depth and distances. People say use a white balance card, but that implies subject will be at most arm distance away. I usually go toward the depth that I will be diving and aim it at a sandy patch at the distance of what I will usually be shooting w/o flash, which I assume is 10-15 ft away, and get a white balance off that sandy patch.

If I want to take picture of more distant subject (walls, drops, etc), and there is no sandy patch 70-100 ft away, I would usually flip around, face upward and take a white balance in the direction of the sun. Since the sun's light is going through around 70-100 ft of water, the light of the sun has to go through the same amount of color absorption as my subject, thus it would be similar to a white card 70ft away. It works similarly well when I am 40 ft deep and subject is maybe 20-30ft, etc. The color might still be slightly off since sand is not completely white, nor is my lens able to catch only the disk of the sun, but they are good enough to show where people would be thinking why everything is so blue.

 

[Ardy]

ack...plane shutter...I guess you can step down the lens as much as possible and let your flash or external strobe fire off with close to a full burst of light.

I did like post adjustment on 5 images and I got tired of it, of course, I didn't shoot raw, so I went though a complicated procedure of working in CMYK space. I used this technique many many years ago when memory size was low and shooting raw on my camera meant being able to put only a few pictures on the memory card.:

Getting Rid of the Underwater Blues :: Wetpixel.com


One thing is you can set your white balance at different depth and distances. People say use a white balance card, but that implies subject will be at most arm distance away. I usually go toward the depth that I will be diving and aim it at a sandy patch at the distance of what I will usually be shooting w/o flash, which I assume is 10-15 ft away, and get a white balance off that sandy patch.

If I want to take picture of more distant subject (walls, drops, etc), and there is no sandy patch 70-100 ft away, I would usually flip around, face upward and take a white balance in the direction of the sun. Since the sun's light is going through around 70-100 ft of water, the light of the sun has to go through the same amount of color absorption as my subject, thus it would be similar to a white card 70ft away. It works similarly well when I am 40 ft deep and subject is maybe 20-30ft, etc. The color might still be slightly off since sand is not completely white, nor is my lens able to catch only the disk of the sun, but they are good enough to show where people would be thinking why everything is so blue.

This is very interesting Lwang and I have never heard of this before. Will try it on the next trip probably in December (let the water warm up here in Australia) or my trip after that to the Phillipines in Feb.

 

[DazedAndConfuzed]

or if your camera has white balance memory, save each one in a memory slot, so all you have to do is select the one for the appropriate depth/distance.

You can even point your camera at some of the bluish section of your UW pictures you have and set that as white balance. The more blue-er, the deeper/more distant it will be perceived to be. Then take a picture of your bluish underwater photos and see what the outcome of the picture would be like (in outdoor light?).....fine tune the WB and take again...and once you have a shot and think....that's how the picture of a subject 20ft away at 50 ft deep should look like, save it in a WB memory slot. Then do it for your other common depth/distances.

 

[Doubler]

or you could set up underwater presets in PS or Aperture and batch run your photos. Digital always need adjustment. They are not like film. Even with film, adjustments were made in the darkroom.