Quick question on using G10 on bright sand

[WOODMAN]

I am leaving for the Bahamas in 2 days, so this will have to be fast... I used to shoot a C5050 with dual Ikelite DS125 strobes and an Ikelite case with TTL wiring, and now I am trying out essentially the same rig with my new G10 inserted in the Ikelite case instead. (Yah, it was a bitch getting the Canon to fit in the old 5050 case!) Anyway, I always had trouble with the 5050 and shooting things like sand divers on white sand. The image would overexpose badly, and of course there is no repairing something like that later. I keep thinking it is a white balance problem, but maybe there is a way to set the G10 to deal with this better? Any thoughts? I am going to shoot in Manual, so I have pretty much everything available to me. Thanks for your help. Woody

 

[gravity]

make sure you shoot at the lowest iso setting available on your camera. then you have to balance underexposing the subject with overexposing the sand. I would rather slightly underexpose the main subject rather than blow out the sand. If you keep the blowouts minimal and the underexposure minimal, it should be fixable in post.
my wife has the g10, and we have found if you are not shooting in manual, it requires a strong dose of negative exposure compensation. But I don't have experience using it with ikelite's ttl. using ttl that might not be the case.
since you are shooting in manual, keep making the aperture smaller and turning down the power of the strobes (while keeping the camera at the lowest iso) until you are no longer blowing out highlights.

 

[Puffer Fish]

If you have a strobe.. and use program, the default shutter speed is a 1/60... and you will, even with iso 80 (all I shoot).. have an over exposed image.

I setup the shutter priority to a 1/500th of a second, and when bright sand is present, use that....you can pick, or adjust (but practice that before trying to use it under water)..

Here is a bright sun, shallow water shot:

The color is off because I did not think to do a manual white balance before shooting it (had not actually tried it... it is easy).

Now I just do the white blalance using the sand (as the strobe light will not be seen) and then shoot...

You get this then:

With the settings already in the camera, it is just a knob twist.

 

[Nemrod]

BTW, the new G11 has two ND filters to effectively increase the range of the lens since most P&S are limited to f stops less than 16 or so the ND2 and ND4 filters give f stop equivalents to f32.

N

 

[gravity]

if you are using a strobe, the f-stop and strobe brightness are going to be relevant to the exposure of sand that is within the reach of the strobe (that is the sand being blown out, right?), the shutter speed controls the brightness of the background beyond the reach of the strobe. So ISO, f-stop, strobe power, and ND filter is the way to control blown out sand, not shutter speed.