Mode question

[verona]

Manual. Usually f5.6, 1/100 and ttl strobe.

 

[MdkSniper]

Well, I used to use my Canon Powershot A80 in Av mode, but I bought a DSLR over the summer and I'm planning on getting an ikelite housing for it soon. It sucks that i'm a student in college. Oh well, what is the best way to learn shooting in manual mode? Perhaps practicing in my pool?

 

[herman]

The pool is not a bad way to learn. We have a local digital UW group who set up "reefs" in the pool to practice on.
To get you started, F-stop and strobe control the exposure of the near area, say 5 ft or so in, shutter speed controls distant exposure. For example, with good ambient light an F-stop of 5.6 and strobe power set to match with a shutter speed of 1/80 will give you a light blue backround. The exact picture with the same F-stop and strobe with a shutter speed of 1/500 will give you a black backround.

 

[justleesa]

another vote for manual...

 

[RonFrank]

Hey guys, i'm just curious what mode everybody shoots in underwater. Do you guys use manual, aperature priority, shutter priority, or something else? I'm curious because I have been using a mixture between aperature priorority and manual. Often I forget to change both aperature and shutter speed in manual because the situation is changing, causing me to lose some shots that I would have liked to have taken.

To date I have not used an external strobe. I also have found that when shooting on a sunny day with good vis on shallow reefs one does not necessarily need or want to use a strobe all the time.

Here are some thoughts however. A strobe is going to put out X amount of light at Y distance. X = an aperture setting that may have to be adjusted based on the Y distance. With this thinking one can certainly use aperture priority. This ASSUMES that there is enough light to be shooting at aperture X and allowing the camera to select the shutter. Shutter speeds must be enough to prevent camera shake, and stop any action, however flash will freeze action to a large extent IF used as the primary light source. If you are balancing it, then dragging the shutter can result in blur.

One could also shoot in Shutter priority (Tv for some). Then rather than adjusting both the shutter AND aperture AND flash one set's the shutter to some appropriate level, and then adjusts the flash to match the aperture the camera's selects.

The most popular option seems to be manual as maybe it's easier to just control everything. However this assumes that one is constantly chimping (actually all mode require this to a degree, and it's worth doing).

I tend to shoot in S mode if not using a flash, and in A mode using the internal flash. I will have to see what works best for me once I get an external flash, but I'm think A mode will be my starting point.

I will be interested in getting a DSLR UW with a TTL flash at some point. I'm BETING I can shoot in S mode, set the flash to maybe -1/3 to -2/3, and get damn good results for the majority of the shots.

I'd be interested to hear from those who are actually using TTL with the Ikelite housing.

 

[Ishie]

I shoot manual, but my camera has a "my mode" feature so I've preprogrammed the majority of settings for different environments so I don't have to worry about trying to catch an elusive shot while switching my camera modes. When I've had my camera on regular manual, I tend to screw up which feature I'm adjusting.