Lighting big animals & divers & keeping backround

To create a fish portrait where the background is black offen its used

high speed and small aperature (like 1/500, f22) iso 100, close to the object is importand to...

My question is if we can use the same technic in full body divers or big fishers (Sharks & dolphins)

The technical problems must be strobe power and abjustment.. (Long arms)

as low light in oceans (shooting in the dusk) or dark pools..

the background and maybe bottom must be far away (how far i dont know ??)

Have anybody use this technic to shoot divers or big fishes? if yes what is the strobe power that is needed as well as arms setup and aditional tools?

Lambis

Hi lambis, there is a very simple way to do it, shoot at night

Arnon my friend...

why i have not think about it i dont know.... :-) Oh man i am not anymore a boy now i am a old boy :-)

But serious night or dark pools will work but how about strobe power?

Lambis

Hi Lambis.

This is something I've played with a little but didn't really spend too much time on. But I'd like to try it again.

One thing I found was not to shoot up. Just no way to get it black (Except at night ) Not the best example but the closest I've come.

And, you need to accept that an image taken in fairly shallow water during a sunny day isn't going to be very black so Photoshop will be needed too. On this picture, shot during a sunny day, Bahamas (Where the water is incredibly clear and bright) in 15'- 5meters, settings f14 @ 1/250 Strobes at 3/4 power. Then I used levels and selective color to increase the black point. I know the sand in this one brightens up the shot but if it were mid-water, I think it would be fairly close to black. In fact, this shot would look better as black and white.

Rand

Hello Lambis

OK here is what i do when i want to simulate that a diver is deeper than they actually are.

firstly i'll address the strobe power.

Quite simple, If you exposing your subject with strobe power alone the usual calculations work

F-stop = GN of Strobe / Distance strobe is away from your subject.

or simply just use the exposure table on your flash gun, not always 100% accurate but you can adjust either strobe power, F-stop or falsh distance to suit your foreground exposure.

As for your background just wack up the shutter speed, and try and get a slightly downward (if no bottom) or Level shot in , Dont involve the suface if possible.

see this example

please excuse the steam up in the mask, But if you should increase the shutter speed a little more then the background would have been totally black.

others here

Yes i know that these images of Cave Diving look like they are shot in a Cave... That was the purpose for this magazine article.

However looks can fool.. they were shot in a RIVER OUTSIDE... Near to the cave opening, as couldn't be bothered to lugg all my kit up the side of a hill.

I hope i wasn't telling you to suck eggs with all of this.

regards

Craig

Thanks guys its help a lot

I just see that both off you use not very stronge strobes for this kind off photos...

Intraeting becauce i have thibk that you need pwer strobes a s125 IKE but i see inons do just fine..

Craig

F-stop = GN of Strobe / Distance strobe is away from your subject.

Also if we have

GN 20 and the subject is 2 meters away then we have F10 .. or

GN 18 3 meters away F 6 . more or less ( I know 3 meters is to much :-)

Is this working with dual setup strobes... and GN is unterwater? becauce some strobes , as INON, dont tell what GN is underwater....

Hey Lambis,

Usually the GN is the same for dual strobes, because you are spreading the light rather than adding it ... for what it's worth, the GN's you gave (maybe just as quick examples) are BIG...for example, the Ike DS125 is about 10m (UW, ISO 100).

I have a couple shots in this vein, but less impressive than the examples above. I tend to shoot at the max shutterspeed for sync (fast on the D70!), and balance strobe power and fstop, biasing to high power and small apertures to increase the blackening effect (though I lose a stop with the diffusers, but then the D70 only goes down to ISO-200).

Chris

HI Guys

OK AS for GN, flash guns are usually quoted for there land value @100 ISO

for underwater in good conditions divide it by 2. if the conditions are worse as my river was, then / 3

As the d70 is 200 Iso do your normal calculations and then close the aperture setting by 1 stop ...

or simply go to the next narrower setting aperture than your calculations give you for 100 ISO

hope your with me, we all agree that 200 iso is 1 stop faster than 100 iso yeh ....

so if i get F8 in my power calc 100 iso , then i use F11 at 200 Iso....

Most exposure tables supplied with guns will ALWAYS tell you the GN of the strobe somewhere in the table.

Lambis, You really dont need a powerful gun for working Wide angle close ups using medium apertures like F8.

In the days gone by of FILM and Xsync Speeds of 180/Sec we had to have powerful guns, Why, well if we dealt with a sunburst then we needed to control the exposure with Aperture as our shutter speeds were fixed at max 180 or 200/sec depending on camera. it was aperture that controlled the sunball

so we would use and need powerful guns to hit light onto our subjects as our aperture often ended up being very narrow F16 or F22

now if using a GN gun of 10... divide this by 22 and see what you get.... MACRO CLOSE... so we needed portable SUN'S down there.

But what do we have now... A D70 with whatever shutter speed we dam well like... WICKED we can use this now to control the background exposure and use aperture to control our flash distance and exposure..

and also we are dealing with 200 ISO all the time, so we gained 1 stop of light back. even better.

Hope you all followed that...

I've found that my SB-105's are quite ample in dealing with all subject matter.

Remeber the name of the game..... GET CLOSE & REMOVE AS MUCH WATER BETWEEN YOU AND YOUR SUBJECT MATTER.

Regards to all after my little rant

craig

O.k. Craig i have follow you.. i think :-)

From what i understand is that the best resultats is going very close

SO i can use a 10,5 mm or 16mm lens 10,5mm if corect composing give great resultats without to have to deal with distrosion and dam i am geting close. but maybe i have to deal with the light that comes above...

Second strobes.. Dual strobes. from what i undertand a 2xINON d2000w will be enough for this sort of photos.. especialy becauce you can fine adjusted them ...

very very intresing and educated topic form me...

man i need a uw lighting kurs... I think i will visit Craig and alex in UK :-)

Oooopppsss

i forgot guys to say..

I'm a Sea & Sea user, So i can use whatever shutter speed i like as the camera doesn't even know there is a flash plugged in and turned on. only 2 pins are connected in my housing

that gives my a full shutter speed range.

Those of you that are ITTL users you may find that you cannot exceed the 500/sec sync speed in the D70

Not sure how yours in rigged Lambis as your an nexus user. should you wish information on how to get the full range shutter speed please email me off list and i can send you a diagram on which pins to cover up on the hotshoe to trick the camera.

Happy Shooting

Craig

Lambis

If you ever wish to take a visit over here, your more than welcome around my place.

The waters cold and murkey, but the information will be good..

When are you next getting over to egypt ?

could try and arrange a meeting

I've got place left on a great trip to Borneo (sipdan-mabul-kapalai) in May if you fancy coming along on that.

regards

craig

Lambis

Looks like the inon's will come in at GN 22m @ 100 iso LAND

so Underwater we are dealing with GN11

rough exposure table based on 100 iso will give you this set of distances

Strobe to subject distance = GN/F-Stop (100 iso)

F22 = 0.5m

F16 = 0.7m

F11 = 1m

F8 = 1.4m

F5.6 = 2m

F3.5 = 3.1m ... too far away anyway for a quality image

F2.8 = dont bother again too far away .

these are all at FULL power.

@ 200 iso we will be using 0.7m @ F22 and so on down the listing.

regards

craig

p.s these are to EXPOSE the subject with flash, if you wish to balance the subject with flash then you must be at least 1 or 2 stops less than your chosen aperture

so in effect if i was using a F8 and i was balanced exposure with my flash i would use the setting of 5.6 or 3.5 on the strobe power or AUTO mode..

this will output less light and only highlight your subject and not EXPOSE it . your only trying to put back in loss of colour and highlights with your strobe during a Balanced exposure.

craig

Hi Lambis,

Here's my experience qith this kind of shots: set the highest shutter speed that you camera will sync with, aim the camera slightly downward, aim the strobes slightly upward (so as not to light the bottom , if any), set your strobes to full power, and adjust the aperture to the smallest you can while maintaining sufficient exposure of the subject (as described in Craig's post above). This should give you the results you're after.

Cheers,

Mat

Thanks Mat

Very short and full off info answer :-) i get it now... see how everything comes when i have my strobes...

BTW i am thinking to to order a new lens a full body portrait lens for above & under water... thinking something between 35-50 mm

any tips...

Lambis

If you've got the budget, go for the 17-55mm DX lens. It's the best in the range you're looking for. Only thing is the price tag is a bit steep