Sony DSC-P10

[MacHeath]

Lodnek

I use a P9 with a S&S strobe, and some of my friends use the Sony light. Photos come out great, but there are lots of ways to make them blurry. Believe me I manage most of them every dive.

Assuming I haven't done anything silly, like left the camera on Macro for shots that are more than 0.5m away, the most common cause of a blurred shot is moving between pressing the button and the shutter going off. The shutter lag is not long, but it is sufficient to give a blurred pic.

Seems likely to be the case for you if you have the problems in darker conditions. The aperture will tend to be more open giving a smaller depth of field, so the blurring is worse.

Hope this helps

 

[rakjar]

I never thought about the movement underwater and the quality of my pics, thanks

 

[ReyeR]

the most common cause of a blurred shot is moving between pressing the button and the shutter going off. The shutter lag is not long, but it is sufficient to give a blurred pic.

The cause of blurred pics on the P series is not shutter lag. Shutter lag is the time taken between pressing the shutter release and the camera capturing the image.
The Sony Px series are fully automatic cameras, so you have no control over shutter speed and aperture. In low ambient light conditions, which is what you will encounter UW, the camera will use the lowest shutter speed, usually 1/30 and 1/40, and throw the aperture open, usually 4.5, depending on your zoom setting (check the EXIF data of your blurry photos). In these conditions you will end up with some or all of the following problems that will give you blurry pics:

- the camera will struggle to focus
- slow shutter speeds and/or surge and/or skittish fish = movement and blurring
- wide apertures = poor depth field, which means a very small distance in front and behind the focus point will be in focus

The Sony 20w halogen will help, but because it is not very bright you will need to be close to the subject. The additional light will help the camera focus and give you slightly better shutter speeds that'll freeze any movement/motion.

A strobe will help because you will need to switch the internal flash on to 'fill-in' flash to fire the external strobe. This will set the camera to give you better shutter speeds, usually 1/60 and 1/80, that'll freeze movement/motion. Add an aiming/modelling light and it will help the camera focus. Unfortunately your aperture will still be pretty wide, which is one of the factors that will affect your strobe exposure. This is probably the reason why kelpdiver has do dial the 90DX to its minimum settings.

HTH

 

[Cecil]

Agree with all the above. What I've been doing lately to help with motion blurr is to up the ASA in low light. More noise is better than a lost shot. I pretty much use ASA 400 all the time now.

This single factor (motion blurr) is the greatest killer of pictures. I also try to do minimize my movement when I squeeze the trigger, pause your breath, steady your body and freeze.