Newbie - in a quandry:Strobe, Filter or go snap-happy?

Hi All,

I've been looking through the forum looking for some answers. I found some, but I'm also getting confused with the volume - and often contradictory advice!

I'm off to Martinique in a few weeks (lucky me!). My last scuba holiday was in the Maldives a couple of years back, which was my first attempt at underwater snaps with a digi P&S in a case.

I wasn't happy with the results.

A friend of mine came back from her hols around the same time, and she'd bought a strobe for her P&S. The photos were *much* better. I thought the *answer* was "a strobe" - one of the kinds that slaves off of a fiber optic trigger.

HOWEVER - reading this forum has left me a tad confused. Here's a summary of some of the comments:

1. A filter and internal flash is just as good for close (10-20ft) shots?

2. Strobe is only good for "close" shots (10-20ft, or for close-ups) - not for longer reef shots?

3. Strobe plus spotter light really help auto-focus and is basically a must?

4. Forget strobe - just fill the card and do digital post processing at home?

5. Forget Auto, set fixed EV, WB and ISO?

For info, my setup is a 5mp Casio Exilim Z-50 with the EWC-40 case. I'm a P&S kind of guy - as I don't dive that often any longer and am there to enjoy the view and not spend my dive fiddling with gadgets!

Going through my Maldives photos, the biggest issues are:

1. Focus. As in lack of.

2. Colour saturation/balance.

2nd point I've made some progress with iPhoto - but I'd prefer to have more "natural" colours rather than my post-processing guesses.

Strobe: I'm tempted by the Fantasea Nano Strobe setup - but am I wasting my time and adding extra weight to my luggage and additional stress during the dive with extra pointy bits??

Filter: I watched the video on the Fantasea website. The "with" and "without" red filter was quite spectacular.

Any help would be most appreciated!

Color saturation and balance issues can be dealt with by;

1) manually setting white balace at depth regularly

2) Using a strobe (for as far as the light/flash will reach). best for Macro shots. (If using strobe, WB settings on camera should be set to Auto or cloudy)

3) Simply using a program like Lightroom to adjust it later

If you have a flash and an application such as Lightroom, your problem here is solved.

Focus issues can be more complex. This depends entirely on your camera and available settings. Obviously, if there is not enough light, and your camera has NO manual settings, if the flash is turned off, the camera will try it's best to allow light in. This may result in slow shutter speeds which translate into camera shake.

However, if your flash is on, you may simply not be close enough. The water column between the subject and camera seriously degrades sharpness. One of the basic rules of UW photography is to get as close as possible....then try to get even closer!! I see all too often people trying to snap macro photos from over 2m away with P&S cameras hoping to use their zoom to compensate. This will result almost always in sub-par images.

Your camera is capable of good shots. A strobe and getting close will solve all your problems here. A good software like lightroom will save much of what you thought were off. I suggest you post a photo here where the color was off and let some of us guys here try to fix it. Of course, we can't save an out of focus pic!

Hope this helps.

Here's a good example. OK, the 2 largest subjects are blue on a blue background...but I think it's pretty clear the balance is way off.

I'll check out that software for sure!

On the filter side - that's a "no" then??

Thanks for the help!

Ok....I managed this a few a few secs with Lightroom. Not too great as the original photo is a little overexposed which makes it a little hard to bring detail back....do you have other files less over exposed to play with?

Hi OCB and welcome to Wetpixel.

I used to write a lot of beginner articles (check our library) and covered this subject in my "What order do I buy stuff" thread :-)

I recommend you start w/ your camera and housing - using the internal strobe. This setup will NOT LET YOU get a good photograph of anything that is farther than 18" away and bigger than a loaf of bread. Let's be clear on that one - if you disregard, then you'll get blue photos.

Next, I recommend buying an external strobe. This will let you photograph things that are up to 3' away and as as a result you can fit in stuff that is up to large dog sized.

Finally, if you get a wide angle lens, and use your camera+strobe you can still only photograph things that are 3' away or closer, but you can fit bigger stuff into the picture - up to person sized.

So to summarize: everything that is not close is going to be blue no matter what. You can add color back by using a strobe - but they only reach up to 3' So some of the photo will have warm colors (the close stuff) and the rest is going to be blue.

Cheers

James

James ... would your 3' rule apply with two decently powerful strobes or does that increase a bit?

With two (GN 22 & 20) can you light-up subjects 5-6' away?

Thanks!

(btw - ydm ... )

Unless it's something really shiny, a strobe doesn't add much (except backscatter) to the photo where the subject is over a max of say 4' away.

It is not the power of the strobes that is the issue but the fact that you lose red light very quickly through water. At 3' from the subject, the light from the strobe has had to pass through 6' of water before it makes it to the sensor (or film) in the camera. That is a long distance and a lot of red and some yellow light will have already been lost. Additionally, with more water there is more particulate matter and so more back scatter as James points out.

Like I said.....get close.....then get closer...... This one rule will solve almost ALL your color/sharpness issues. You may miss out on some potential shots but a single good picture is way better than a hundred mediocre or crappy ones.

Cheers all.

I reckon I'll go for a strobe - just to try.

I learned to dive in Scottish waters...we used lights after 10ft to make the green murk look a slightly more interesting green! I guess I'm still not used to being able to see more than a few feet in front of me...

On the post-processing side, I tried Lightroom. It looks more detailed than what I have in iPhoto, but to be honest I'm happy with what iPhoto on my Mac gives me for free! You can take the man out of Scotland, but you cannae take the Scot out the man

Looking at the histograms of my photos - and reading a few links from here and Googling - I see how the red is missing\skewed to the left and blue is over-dominant. At least I now understand what those histogram things mean now!!

I'd still be curious to hear about peoples' opinion on red filters. I guess they're only really going to be useful to about 10m in the Caribbean? I've struggled to find any good advice on this subject...

Let me add to your confusion: there is one way to get colour more than three feet away, in water up to about 15m (maybe 20m in ideal conditions) - use an Auto Magic filter with auto white balance. See the Magic Filter website, and don't worry about a strobe.

The two-strobe solution is used to paint light across the width of a wide-angle or fisheye lens, not to push out a more intense light for a longer distance (physics is against you on that score).

To shoot what you want you probably need that wide-angle lens, with a way to fix it to your camera's housing. Then a strobe or a filter. The strobe puts colour in the foreground, but leaves the background blue. It looks better if you can arrange for the background to be a bit darker, ie underexposed compared to the foreground.

Tim

B)

I am no expert but I have read the theory..... filters do not add color. They reduce the color we do not want. They work well in shallow water with best results 10m and shallower and under brighter conditions. With filters and sufficient light, colors can extend much further than just where a strobe can reach.

With Lightroom, go to the "develop" tab and choose the picture you want to process. Click on the eyedropper tool on the panel on the right side and then move your mouse to a spot which is supposed to be white or almost white (gray tank, whitish sand, etc)....click once on that spot and the application does the rest! Presto, proper colors. There are also sliders for changing exposure, contrast, sharpening, etc.

Honestly, the resulting colour is better and more easily achieved with a Magic filter than in Photoshop because of the way the histogram is distorted by the filter. It's much easier to get ghastly results when the initial image is dominated by blue, and this is the colour that the filter reduces. If you shoot into the sun, neither technique will work very well, and you need a strobe (filters and Photoshop will make direct sunlight look very strange).

Tim

B)

Right - photoshop (or any program) cannot fix a photo that is dominated by blue light and not enough red. The filters are designed to ALTER the light that gets to your camera sensor, so that you have a better balance to work with.

Cheers

James

Hi OCB and welcome to wetpixel. I am pretty new here too.

I am on the same road as you. I cannot speak as an expert, I can only describe my experience so I hope that is some assistance.

I find the in-case flash has too much backscatter most of the time and not correct colors when I do not use it - as you have found. It is also not strong enough.

What could have been good photos are not due to those issues, same as yours.

So I bought a sea and sea YS-25 and the results increased markedly..but far from 100% satisfactory.

I am less than perfect at alignment with strobe and camera though I do focus on that point.

I also started using Lightroom recently and really like the results. It helps clear out backscatter and correct colors. when its not starting from a total mess. I have not had great results when colors were way off, as in over 40 ft deep and no flash at all.

You can see some results on my flickr page. I have only added a few photos there so far.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/25225664@N05/

(please let me know if that link does not work)

On-camera flash:

The lemon shark was with the camera strobe with LOTS of backscatter, all a bit too far away. As you can see with that shark photo, I have been messing with white balance but have yet to find the balance that has the shark and the blue behind him with proper color. The blue is too purple in this depiction but the shark is OK. When the color is blue, the shark does not look right. If you look careful, you can see the circles where I removed with backscatter which took FOREVER messing with it..with fair results.

There was MASSIVE backscatter but I will not be in Moorea again soon nor have a shark with a fish hook in his mouth swimming by soon. OH..., to have had the off-camera strobe back then...

No flash:

In the clownfish photo, it was taken before I owned the YS-25 (like the shark) and due to backscatter concerns and the shallow depth (20-30 ft) I shot it without flash. Still not able to get the color balance correct in all areas, as you can see, even using lightroom.

Off camera flash:

Compare the those to the Stoplight Parrotfish, shot close with the YS-25. Colors are balanced with a very slight adjustment in Lightroom. A few min. was spent clearing up very trace backscatter and the average person will not find the corrections.

I strongly recommend a fiber optic driven, off camera strobe. Only using one strobe has its issues but you might start with one and see how you like it.

You may note the Kansas Lionfish on the flickr page. its a small species, limited to eastern kansas swimming pools, at 2-4 ft depth. Note the purple string 'bladder' for depth control. This fish allows very close approach by divers which is nice for strobe testing.

Those 2 shots were with an Inon Z-240 which I am learning to use, a recent purchase.

Too far away:

As you can see with the white spotted file fish, he was too far away for the YS-25 strobe to light him up well compared with the background but at least there are some decent colors and no backscatter issue.

You can see a bit of the strobe power difference with the lionfish (Z-240) vs the other strobe shots (YS-25). The lionfish was in a well lit pool in 2-3 ft of water yet you see no background colors in the close photo and only slightly in the second. I was using f8 and the strobe could produce plenty of light.

I could not take photos from very far out with the YS-25 as its far less powerful than the Z-240.

With the YS-25, I generally shot at f2.8 and left it there since the flash was not powerful enough for most other selections. It is easy to use as you set the strobe and camera and fogert them...just take the photos. Good enough for a vacation photo guy, which sounds describes us both.

I have not tried the magic filters so far but have only learned the same as you, by reading here and their website.

I am hoping to go to 2 strobes to solve one of my issues. Having one strobe, low backscatter and the subject well lit is more difficult than I had expected.

Put the strobe shooting too close to the lens and you get backscatter.

Put the strobe out further and a quick fish coming close is not lit properly but could be great...if only...

I plan to sell the YS-25 setup and by another Z-240 before I visit the ocean again. Thus having 2 strobes that match and hopefully, improving the results a bit more but certainly at a cost.

I hope this is of some help.

Diver dave1

I have not used magic filters but I have read up on them and understand the theory behind them. While I have no doubt they work, and the theory says they should, for me, they would be far too limiting.

As has already been mentioned, they work by filtering out blue and green* light to compensate for the loss of red and yellow light filtered out by the water to give you approximately the right levels of each colour. This means that a lot of light is going to be filtered out decreasing your available light resulting in longer shutter speeds, larger apertures (smaller f/stops) and/or higher ISO settings.

The filter is always going to filter out the same amount of blue and green light all the time. This will not take into account the variation in the remaining wavelengths of light at different depths or under different conditions both above water (cloudy, sunny, shade, etc.) and underwater (great viz, good viz, poor viz, etc.).

You are stuck with the filter on the camera from way before the dive, especially if you have to fit it behind the lens, to way after the dive. If any other photo opportunities come up, I'd be stuck.

That's not to say that I don't like the idea. I think the principle is great. I just find that using strobes gives me much more flexibility and creativity.

* Well, it is more than just blue and green, but for sake of simplicity, we'll go with that. In reality, it should be adjusting each wavelength of light differently to compensated for what the water takes out.

Cheers all.

I think I'll buy some filter material if I can find it cheap enough. My camera housing doesn't accept filters, but I reckon I can jury-rig something - just for test purposes. I read somewhere when I was googling there are suppliers of filter materials who sell varying "strengths" and are a bit cheaper than the Magic Filter.

I'll happily post my results when I get back!

Cheers all.

 

I think I'll buy some filter material if I can find it cheap enough. My camera housing doesn't accept filters, but I reckon I can jury-rig something - just for test purposes. I read somewhere when I was googling there are suppliers of filter materials who sell varying "strengths" and are a bit cheaper than the Magic Filter.

 

I'll happily post my results when I get back!

Quick update. I managed to find this: http://www.cokin.com/shoeholder.html

£20 online, or 10 euro from my local camera shop!

I also managed to get a cokin red filter (and some others) off ebay.

I also bought the Fantasea Cool Flash Nano. Should give me enough options.

That should be interesting OCB. So you'll put the filter outside your housing? Very ingenious.

Be wary when using your filter - you can not use the filter and a flash at the same time without everything in the foreground looking red.

Cheers

James

That should be interesting OCB. So you'll put the filter outside your housing? Very ingenious.

 

Be wary when using your filter - you can not use the filter and a flash at the same time without everything in the foreground looking red.

 

Cheers

James

Yes - filter(s) slot in and out on the outside of the housing. I'll take some thin rubber bands for safety purposes. It looks like I might be able to have both the Fantasea strobe attached, and the Cokin shoe - so in theory I can play with the filter in the shallows then switch to strobe a bit deeper/underhangs etc.

Thx for the tip re: flash and filter. Makes sense!

I'm trying to convince myself I *don't* need one of these: http://www.acer.com/aspireone/vision.html

Ultra portable PC thingy....