We went to Bonaire intending to work on getting a nice blue behind our macro subjects. Jeff shot this small 3 inch red froggie with his 400 Xti and the 60mm. He was setup at 1/30 sec @ f22, iso 100. The attempt was intended to get a good DOF and still get the blue water. The dual 110's did a nice job of lighting the subject and the blue background is there, but we have the ugly green tint on the top of the sponge and coral etc. in the middle distances. Any help on setup or ?? would be greatly appreciated. We're doing something wrong.
Thanks,
Steve
The ugly green tint you speak of is due to a lack of strobe light. You should have positioned your strobes a little better. Unfortunately, this is something you don't see until later, when you view the image on a monitor.
For the dark blue background, underexpose -2.0EV...
Thanks, I was thinking strobe position was part of the solution but I'm not sure how I would have positioned them on this shot to lose the green. If I go high to light the sponge I would lose the throat, I think? I'm wondering if the smaller 110's got to us here. They were positioned at 3 & 9, full power. If we had used the more powerful 250's for a shot like this I'm wondering if we could have done better in this circumstance. The color of this shot looks funky to me too. I guess my eye is used to the old velvia colors and this type of shot looks too saturated or something. I think that's what prompted me to put this shot up for you guys to comment on. It just doesn't look "right" and I'm not sure why.
We are shooting manual so there was no automatic exposure compensation.
Still a lot to learn.
Steve
Steve,
In manual mode, set the shutter speed & aperture to give you the -2.0EV - not as easy as getting the camera to do it for you, in A or S, but functional.
Were you using diffusers on your stobes?
Steve,
In manual mode, set the shutter speed & aperture to give you the -2.0EV - not as easy as getting the camera to do it for you, in A or S, but functional.
Were you using diffusers on your stobes?
Thanks, we had metered the background as you suggest and I like the blue we ended up with. The foreground colors from the strobes are a little harsh to my eye and the light doesn't reach out far enough to kill the green. But maybe you can't have it both ways.
No we didn't have the diffusers on.
Steve
A way to lessen the effects seen here is to use a matched set of filters, a CC30 magenta on the lens and a CC30 green on the strobes. Doing this will lessen the difference in color between foreground and background while maintaining white balance. It will cause the water to be even more blue however.
Another approach is to use a third strobe or a ring flash to light the mouth while using the traditional strobes to light the sides. I always carry a third strobe clipped to my BC for this purpose. It's not practical to hope that a strobe will light down the mouth while still giving good coverage on the sides IMO.
I always carry a third strobe clipped to my BC for this purpose. It's not practical to hope that a strobe will light down the mouth while still giving good coverage on the sides IMO.
Thanks Craig, I have an extra 110 but I never considered carrying it except for slave backlighting etc. This particular shot was a quick reaction, Heck it was the first frog fish we had ever seen. The fish decided to belch and Jeff was there with what he had. I did notice the ambient exposure green color though on a bunch on the macro stuff we shot. I'll have to go back and research his camera settings and see if I can figure out what's different. Thanks for the guidance on the filters. I'll check them out.
Steve
Mystery of the green sponge has been solved. Turns out the initial image was very underexposed and "saved" in Lightroom. I couldn't understand how the ambient light exposure color was showing up. I get it now. It was really there. You can play with the exposure in LR and ACR but the color won't lie. Thanks for all the help. Lesson learned. Get the exposure as close as you can in the camera, duh!
Steve
Steve - I was going to say that it looks like an image that was underexposed and "saved." The noise in the image is typical of an image pushed up severely.
Having said that, the green cast might have still been there even if you had exposed the image properly in camera, so this conversation is still a good place to learn about strobe positioning and other options.
Having said that, the green cast might have still been there even if you had exposed the image properly in camera, so this conversation is still a good place to learn about strobe positioning and other options.
Agree completely, thanks Eric. Guess I'm going to have to get back to Bonaire and try it again. We know where that froggie lives. I'm also been thinking about Craig's matched filter approach, I haven't been aware of this. I've read some on Alex's filters and techniques, and I've seen Craig"s and others posts on strobe filters but I hadn't put 2 and 2 together. Are there any example images that use this technique someone can point me to?
Steve
Okay..maybe I'm just too new to be of any help but the photo looks excellent as posted. Yes a little noise in the blue but nothing that distracts from the main subject. Furthermore, the subject is well lit and your eye really isn't drawn to the cyan fringe color. The two things I see when I look at the photo are the crispness of the shot, the fish behavior accompanied by a blue background. It was only your mention of the border elements that brought my attention to them. Nice job.
Thanks Gary for the kind words. Don't get me wrong, I think it's a great shot especially given it was the very first ever dive with an DSLR, and our first frogfish. Heck, I couldn't even see the him after Jeff pointed it out. I thought they were much bigger. Shows how newbie I was. A bunch of our contacts on Flickr agree with you and have left nice comments on the shot. But... It doesn't reach the level of excellence I want to be capable of and I didn't understand why. I was pretty sure we could do better someday and now I have a good idea how. I love that about our shared passion, there is always the next step.
You can play with the exposure in LR and ACR but the color won't lie. Thanks for all the help. Lesson learned. Get the exposure as close as you can in the camera, duh! 
