Cayman Sea Fan

Actually there was quite a bit of surge in this case. This was taken on the East side of Grand Cayman ~40 ft.

I like the lighting in the background and the color of the fish. I suppose it's a bit over-exposed on the sun and some movement/out of focus on the fish.

I took this with the same setup as before Canon digital elf DS125 at 1/8th power manual setting -2ev cloudy. I used a 16 mm Sea and Sea lens.

the camera chose f/2.7 1/200th second EXIF says I was 21 meters from subject but I was really about two+ meters back.

I modified this in photoshop to get the colors right. I changed autolevels hue saturation and levels. The purple haze is an artifact of this, I just liked the way it looks.

Please give your honest opinion so I can improve. Also on image editing as well and feel free to modify this pic.

Nice and sharp but what a nice shot if your strobe had lit the fan.

The picture could also have been dramatically improved with one simple operation - By turning the camera on its side into portait mode. Then you would have had the fluffy coral foreground, fan as main subject and the sun enhancing the blue. I think backwards 1 m, 1 or 2 stops smaller hole and strobe at 1/2 power would have made a great dining room picture!

Copy and shrink to get better effect I forgot!!

You are definately right about the strobe. You should see the original. I was having trouble getting the color I wanted in my shallow photos like this. It seemed like the strobe did fine on my deeper dives ()lots of color) but just faded into blue once I got into the shallow reef where there was no ambient light. Maybe this is a function of shutter-speed or aperature. My camera does not allow manual control of either.

What combination would you have chosen?

Getting closer would have helped too. And portrait mode might have been better. Although I think the cropping is a totally different picture. I like having the fish in the upper left and I think the schooling fish in the background are amazing. They are not as visible in your version. What is the large yellow spot in the foreground bottom center in the cropped version? That is not in the original.

Thanks for the input. I appreciate the critique.

Chris

You are definately right about the strobe. You should see the original.  I was having trouble getting the color I wanted in my shallow photos like this. It seemed like the strobe did fine on my deeper dives ()lots of color) but just faded into blue once I got into the shallow reef where there was no ambient light. Maybe this is a function of shutter-speed or aperature. My camera does not allow manual control of either.

 

What combination would you have chosen?

 

Getting closer would have helped too.  And portrait mode might have been better.  Although I think the cropping is a totally different picture. I like having the fish in the upper left and I think the schooling fish in the background are amazing. They are not as visible in your version. What is the large yellow spot in the foreground bottom center in the cropped version? That is not in the original.

As you get closer to the surface you enter into a strange "twilight zone" this is where the majority of colour is still getting filtered out by the water - blue-green only. At the same point your strobe becomes less efficient because it competes with the ambient light and has less of a torch effect.

This is why a more powerful torch is needed during the day... Video users will tell you this, and why more often than not they switch to correcting filters rather than 2Kw of lighting gear. Maybe using just a 100w for close-up.

So, given this scenario you can understand why your strobe needed to be operating at a higher power setting to compensate for this phenomenon.

In the situation above I would have set the camera in medium bright mode, raised the stobe high in one hand set to full power and composed the portrait shot. A meter or so back would have given the full gorgonian, and brought the sun into the frame. The cameras metering system would have wanted to expose for a silhouette - Thats what it needed I feel then the strobe would have done the business on the foreground & fan. Meanwhile all of the background fish would be clearly silouetted nicely.

Even in Landscape the same effect would have been acheived, slightly higher in the water - At the end of the day it is to ones own personal choice: But, next time why not experiment with both!

[Checkout the first shot in the Manado pictures I posted yesterday - similar but not the same]

The yellow spot is flare induced by the artificial sun effect I added