Rigs dive Sat 4_12_08 - ONCE IN A LIFETIME DIVE! (Part 2 of 2)

[SparticleBrane]

wow great stuff!

What camera/casing are you using and do you do any photoshop filters to make pictures come out so good?

Ken has posted that before here -- good read about this rig. While the rig is nice, the real reason for the good pictures is Ken and his artistic abilities.

 

[Mo2vation]

wow great stuff!

What camera/casing are you using and do you do any photoshop filters to make pictures come out so good?

I shoot the Nikon D200 in the Light & Motion housing.

These shots were taken in full manual mode with the Nikon 12-24mm wide angle zoom, through the Light & Motion 9.5" (or 10"... they quote both in their specs) SuperDome (Glass.)

Two strobes - Ikelite DS125's. ULCS Strobe arms - two 5" segments and a 9" segment on each side.

I do very little in photoshop. Mostly because I don't know much about it. All composition is done in the camera. The only thing I do in PS is bring in the RAW file, white balance so the colors are accurate (yes, everything down there was really that freaky green), and I apply the following filters for all of my W/A shots:

Despeckle
Neat Image (cleans up digital noise)
Unsharp Mask for sharpening (500%, then fade to taste)


There are other setting I may use. I use Shadows & Highlights a lot for Macro. Maybe just a touch on W/A. I will sometimes bump up the black a bit of I don't like the contrast I get out of contrast.

But that's it. I do everything in one layer -because I haven't figured out how to use multiple layers for this stuff yet. I will soon. I crank out a lot of shots each week, so
"dedicated learning time" is pretty rare.

99% of the shot comes out with the RAW import and the White Balancing. I White Balance to three things: The Tank (its gray), the Zinc on the front of the scooter (its gray) and my fav secret weapon is the bezel on the Suunto compass (its PERFECT gray.)

There are no magic bullets. Put yourself in a position to get a good shot - recognize what's going on, sacrifice your body, protect the camera, give good direction to your subject, and don't over process.

When you find good shots and capture them cleanly, you need less processing. I'm the posterchild for less photoshop is more.

---
Ken

 

[Mo2vation]

Ok seriously... How do you get your backscatter to look like grain or dust in the wind when mine always looks like someone dropped a bucket of reflectors into my shot!?

Thanks for sharing the pics!

Hey bud.

Imagine you're looking down on me from the top. If my camera is the center of a clock (where the hands meet), and the subject is at 12:00.

For wide angle shots I never set my strobes at 9 and 3. I start with them at about 8 and 4, and sometimes move them back a little more.

I want the light to land on my subject, at my subject - and not light up the flock at the corners of the frame. I also want complete darkness between the lens and my subject. The more light that leaks in there, the more backscatter becomes an issue.

I also try to get very close.

I shoot with the strobes at as low of setting as I can get away with. This means I'm opening the AP WFO, and often asking my subject to hold very still (tough when the subject is scootering...) There is always, ALWAYS stuff in the water in SoCal. So the more light I throw out, the more that stuff gets lit up.

Get close. Shoot with the stobes backed off a bit. Open stuff up, slow down.

That's all I do. If I get any backscatter, I'll pick it out. But the goal is to light stuff so I don't get any. The shots from the Rigs we're tough to light because we're shooting under the shade of a huge platform with a parfait of about 30 feet of yucky 5-foot viz water above us. It was very dark.

There is very little backscatter in these images - a couple have some strobe bleed, but in most of them there is no discernible backscatter. That comes from placing the lights in the right places and getting close to the subject.

In the first two shots, that stuff on the left of the image isn't backscatter, its bubbles from the rig. On the second-to-the-last shot I jammed up the strobes and shot from INSIDE that fog to try to get the feeling of being in the fog. It didn't work as I had hoped, and really just came out as so much strobe bleed. But I liked her body angle, so I kept the shot.

With my 10.5mm fisheye, its creepy how close I can get. Maybe a foot or less. With the 12-24 I have to back off a bit. But not too much.

Thanks!

---
Ken