My images are not sharp - please help

[PatW]

Well, it could be motion blur or it could be that you just are not focused properly. Using a point and shoot, it is hard to get the focus right. You are focusing on a small screen, through a mask and you have a number of things to think about. Also, shutter lag can hurt. Another thing that can hinder focus is just a photographers inability to stay in one spot. Buoyancy skills are critical. But even the best skills don't work that well in surge. As mentioned above, it could also be motion blur.

When I shot with a point and shoot, it was hard to get the subject into good focus because the camera selected the outline of the subject. On fast moving subjects like damsel fish and butterfly fish, getting decent shots was very hard. I have shifted over to a DSLR. Now there are downsides with the DSLR (size, weight and cost or three I can think of). But the focus is superb. Instead of wondering where I am focused, I can focus on something like an eyeball of a small fish. Also, focusing on fast moving fish is pretty reliable.

Also, many people use either shutter priority or apeture priority when shooting underwater or worse yet, total automatic. The camera is going to try to set the "right" setting. The problem with that is that it can easily choose something that is absolutely dreadful like a low shutter speed virtually guaranteeing motion blur unless you have a tripod handy (which is not happening underwater). I would recommend using manual settings. You have to take practice shots to get the settings right but it is better in the long run.

Work at it and you should get better. If you have access to a pool, you might want to take your gear in and spend some time practicing shooting pool toys other things. It is easy to do and cheaper than going to far flung destination and coming back with bad photos.

 

[BoltSnap]

You appear to be using very slow shutter speeds. More chance for motion blur.

 

[Interceptor121]

You can see from those picture that the blur is around the subject at the edges the camera did actually focus
So change your settings as suggests and there will be improvements

 

[gustele]

I agree that the slow shutter speed could be the problem but also the lobster is not sharp and that shot had a shutter speed or 1/60th. I shot thousands of pictures with the S&S DX-1 with one or two strobes and never had a problem with autofocus so I would rule that factor out. Something that isn't mentioned in this thread is the possibility of condensation on the lens because of the cold water.

 

[Interceptor121]

I agree on the lobster that is plain blur however that may be user error or multi focus choosing something else like a drop on the lens

 

[alcina]

I'd try to eliminate variables and here's how I'd go about it since you have strobes.

I'd set my shutter for 1/125 (or faster - I'm almost always set on 1/160 or faster, but I like darker, deeper coloured backgrounds mostly) coz I know that's going to be fast enough for most things I'm going to shoot. Slower than that and I believe camera movement has the potential to play a bigger role.

Then I'd use my strobes to light my subject and the focus light on my strobe (or external one if you have it) to make sure the camera knows what the hell I want it to actually focus on. Sometimes cameras need a bit of help or they just kinda guess at whatever is near the focus icon in your viewfinder (basically they'll grab whatever has the best contrast usually). Doing these couple of things lets me improve my technique in a myriad of ways while giving me the best shot of easily getting rid of the gremlins that plagued the previous shots. I tend to take a test shot when I first hit the dive site just to make sure I haven't fuffed anything and I'm in the ballpark for the conditions on the day.

As always: shoot, review, adjust, shoot, review, adjust, shoot - repeat.

 

[KeithG]

Hi Everyone,

I am shooting with a Sea & Sea DX-2G with 2 YS-110a strobes. I have just recently bought the 2nd strobe and started shooting in manual (mostly TTL mode).
Thanks!

Where you getting goods shots before you tried manual?

another idea is to set some time aside to try A B comparison shots. Put the camera back in auto mode and take a shot, then do your manual thing. Afterwards examine the set of auto shots to see what settings your camera has chosen. Is it doing a better job?

Other than that, I will give you the opposite advice of most of the posters. Put the camera back on auto and let the technology do its job! You have a very powerful camera in your hands with lots of automatic features that work very well under water.

Like another poster I have used the very similar dx1g and it works extremely well in automode. I only have to resort to manual in a few conditions. Even then I only resort to using manual focus - I have set the function button to control auto/manual focus. When flipped to manual the camera will automatically set manual focus back to the last focus setting (half press or full shutter press).

For this camera, make sure you have set it to spot focus. That way it will only focus on what is in the center of your frame.

You can check your own pictures for the 2 types of blur mentioned.
a) image blur caused by focusing on the wrong thing (or nothing). Scan your picture to see which part is in focus. Your lobster does not appear to have anything in focus. So likely you focused in front of or way behind the lobster. Look carefully at the sand in front of the lobster and parts of the coral behind the loster. Are any of them in focus? The seahorse also has some of this issue. The background to the right behind the seahorse appears to be in sharper focus (but still a little fuzzy). Did you have the camera in macro mode for this one?

B) motion blur caused by your subject moving in the frame will leave a ghost outline (often partial) surrounding the "moving" subject. If the ghosted object was stationary (a coral head) then you moved the camera. (your camera has an auto shake correction feature - is it turned on?) If the ghosted object was a fish and the stationary background is not ghosted, then the fish moved. The puffer, moray and sea horse all appear to have moved on you.

Your chosen shutter speeds do look very slow. In general, anything longer than 1/125 is going to cause problems if you have moving subjects.

Something that may help with getting a handle on appropriate shutter speeds is to do a little research on "sports" photography. Like fish, sports shots tend to feature things that are in motion. I have found some transferable guidelines that helped me out under water.

 

[plok]

Looking at pictures and data I do not see any light coming from strobes; ambient only. That’s why you are forced to set that long exposure. With strobes properly working you should be setting the shutter speed to something like 1/100 to 1/400 on the DX-2G (no matter what is your aperture setting) depending on how much of ambient light you want in the picture. Two of YS-110a are powerful and great strobes. I used to have the same setup before switching to the dSLR. It is a wonderful setup. Your pictures should be way much better.

It does look like the strobe synchronization problem. You may have set your strobes to incorrect mode. It is likely that your strobes fire from the pre-flash when the shutter is still closed. It is easy to check if you shoot in the mirror. Just set the camera and strobes exactly to the same mode and settings that you used and take a picture of yourself in the mirror. If your strobes fire, but appear to be dark on the picture that means they fire at the wrong moment. Experiment with the camera flash and strobe settings. You should see light coming out of strobes on your picture.

BTW I tried using TTL mode on that setup, but failed to make it working for some reason. I was shooting with manual strobe settings. It is not as difficult as it seems initially. Just takes a few test shots each dive before starting to shoot real targets. I am using the same strobes on my current dSLR setup and the TTL mode works well. However I couldn’t find proper DX-2G settings for the TTL.