OK ... First try is a flop ... more help?

[austindiver]

I purchased a Canon S230 Digital camera for my wife for Christmas. Primarily because it is easy to use and small enough to drop in her purse no matter which one she is using at the time.

I purchased the Underwater Housing for it from Canon so she could take it snorkeling. It did ok on the surface. Not great but OK.

She allowed me to take it diving with me and took a few pictures. Then after adjusting the white balance against my slate, as suggested here, I took the remainder of the pics during my dive. While the adjusted pics are better than before setting the while balance many are really out of focus and all are significantly color altered. The dive was in Cancun in 30 feet of water with 75+ vis and plenty of ambient light.

My question is....while I believe I understand the real problem is lighting what is the best way to fix the problem with this specific system. I just want to play with it while I save for a video housing so throwing a lot of money at it is not really an option. If the best thing is a strobe how do you ad a strobe to a system without an external connection? Can you use some type of slave unit with a sensor that sits between the subject and the flash on the camera? Or would it be better to just take my canister light and make a tray for the camera to attach the light and just light the whole area?

Any and all help is greatly appreciated.

Thanks

C

 

[Dee]

Can you post some of the photos? That will help tremendously in trying to figure out what went wrong. Out of focus could mean you were too close for the lens, didn't give the auto focus time to set, shutter speed too slow and you jiggled, etc. Seeing the results will give us an idea.

A strobe will help in most any situation. I'm not familiar with your specific set-up but the S&S YS90DX strobe can use a velcro patch and fiber optic cable for use as a slave with any housing.

 

[austindiver]

The blurry is mostly just me. Practice at holding the camera still would help but I think I am going to take a bit of polycarbonate sheet I have and bend it into a tray with a deeper base. Kind of to use as a stabilizer.

What I am after primarily is to get some color back. The flash on the camera is small and is really only powerful enough for regular fairly close proximity pictures. I tried with and without the diffuser during the dive and there is no discernable difference in color or brightness. Because the camera does an autofocus after painting the subject with a pre-light I would bet the best way to get what I want is to use the diffuser and just paint whatever I want a picture of with a light. A strobe would be nice but I don't think I will get the autofocus to set correctly for me.

Like I said. I'm just playing with this. Just thought if you had a quick answer I would go that direction.

Thanks,

C

 

[Dee]

How far away is your subject? No strobe, no matter how strong it is, is going to light anything beyond about 3ft. with enough light to do any good. I diffuser will help spread out the light but it also weakens and softens it so that's not an answer to getting more color. As I said earlier, I have no knowledge of your specific camera so I can't really comment on the internal strobe. But as far as I know the auto focus should work if you light the subject and the camera can 'see' what it's supposed to focus on. Some folks are using the HID lights in place of an external strobe with OK results.