Problem taking pics in low light/deep dives

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HID lights are nice because they help you see and they help cameras to focus, but they are no substitute for a good strobe. Strobes are literally orders of magnitude brighter. A typical sync speed for a UW strobe is 1/200 sec (ie 5msec). The Ikelite DS125 full dump discharges a 110 Watt-second flash. The average optical power is therefore 110 Watt-sec/0.005sec = 22000Watt. Ignoring issues of beam angle and such, the strobe is 1000x brighter than that 20 Watt HID. The advantage of course is that the light is emitted as a burst, so the peak intensity is very high.

The other problem with HID lights for photography is that they create that annoying hotspot that Warren_L described. A diffuse focus light combined with one (or more strobes) is the way to go. With video, on the other hand, you really need a continuous light source, so HID or these new LED lights work well.

Of course, none of this will help with the original problem which was how to shoot deep wrecks. The brightest strobe in the world won't do much to light up a wreck. The are simply too big. Remember, the light has to go from your strobe to the wreck and back. If the visible part of the wreck is 30 feet away, the light has to travel 60 feet! With big wrecks the problem gets worse in a hurry. As stated earlier, the best bet is big glass, big sensors, and slow shutter speeds, all of which are hard with point and shoot cameras.
 
If I boost up ISO then my pics get way to grainy and loose too much detail for my taste.

With a modest camera... that is just how it goes. There are cameras with much better high ISO performance. As other posters said, the fewer pixels per surface area, the less grain the image will have.
 
One of the issues you face with wrecks is the size. As mentioned before, no strobe can light a wreck, they'll only illuminate the near stuff. Even with all that power it's still absorbed by the water pretty quickly.

Set your manual white balance if you've got it, if not try cloudy. Then get close with a wide-angle lens, slow the shutter, and open your f-stop as much as you can and that will probably be the best you can do with a point & shoot. The sensor is just so much smaller than with a DSLR.

I've just gotten a Canon G-9 in an Ikelite housing with dual DS-125 strobes and I still couldn't get a really good distance picture of a wreck in British Columbia. Next time I'll try natural light and black & white. Still learning. Interestingly enough, the video from the same camera came out great and shows a lot more light and less backscatter in the water than there was in the still shots. I just used the modeling lights from the strobes to illuminate the near stuff.

Easydiver
 
Any filter reduces light. If you are already struggling with low light, I wouldn't want one.

IMHO it is better to shoot in raw mode, and adjust white balance etc digitally in post. Compare this shot to a sample shot from the green water filter product page.

Wrongcrowd Gallery :: Harper's Ferry :: Harpers_Ferry_wreck8_090207

I think the colors in mine are just as good. Contrast sucks in mine because vis is bad, but no filter will help that. The filter also wants you to set WB manually... meaning you'll have to do it over when your depth changes.

Some people swear by the filters though. Perhaps if you can't shoot raw, which makes color adjustments easier, they are a good solution.
 
If you are doing wide format wreck images, you can just about forget using strobes unless you have a few of them. There just no single strobe that can fill a full frame. You can use them to add fill color on objects within 3 to 5 feet of the lens.

Some of the magazine wreck and cave photos that you may have seen may can have 5 or more strobes set on slave to light all the difreing areas. As you can guess it takes a while to set up and some shots are set up and left for a few hours so that the water clears and then the photographer comes back and bangs out 4 or 5 shots.

For full size wrecks, have you tried B&W? The colors are not there at depth so why even try to get them.

Other then that do you have a wide angle lens or are you trying to use the standard camera lens? The wide angle lets you do two things, gets more image into the lens and lets you get closer to the subject which removes water from in frount of the lens.

I have the 620 in an Ike housing with the Inon wide angle lens. So far the results are almost OK, but I am still learning about the tricks of digital cameras. Things like white ballance just are not a concern with a NIKONOS III or V and film.

Some have suggested a tripod and they are the best for time exposures but have the drawback of the bulk and time to set up and fold back up. A half way is a monopole which is just a stick with a camera mount at one end and a point on the other. Shove it into the bottom or between some rocks and you can do 2 or 3 second exposures very quickly. Many sports photo guys use them so that they can move around the field quickly. There are also some trecking poles that have a cap that screws off to leave the screw such as this one:676B Bogen - Manfrotto Lightweight 4 Section Monopod Black Anodized #676B / 3006B.

My first was an old sky pole with a camera mount screw epoxied into one end.

Finaly to see what you can do at depth with time shots check out Leigh Bishops web site here:Shipwreck images By Leigh Bishop
 
Nice pictures Matt!

Mike, I am in the same boat that you are in. I like to take pictures while freediving and although I have a housed Nikon D70s & DS-125 strobe it is just too big to carry with me while freediving.

For lack of a better option I have been freediving with a Nikonos when shooting wrecks. My pictures turn out grainy and lacking color too. Even though the Nikonos is not digital, there are some good qualities like the shutter release when you press the button, when I use a 15mm lens I can get real close to the wreck (great for low vis) and I can get alot of the wreck in the picture. There are no low light autofocus issues. These cameras are also real cheap these days because everyone is ditching them and going digital.

We were out freediving this past weekend on a local shipwreck and I carried a Nikonos V with 15mm lens and no strobe. The pictures are here if you want to take a look. They are nothing to write home about. They were all shot on f4. I've converted some to black & white.

I’d be interested in hearing what you eventually decide on.

-Chris
 
https://www.shearwater.com/products/swift/

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