Black Background Macro on Compact Camera

Ok guys, a technique question. I have been fooling around with my compacts (Fuji F100 and Pana TZ10) for a while now, and have just stumped up for a Strobe (YS-01), and want to try taking some more advanced shots, specifically black background macro. I managed quite well with onboard flash and an Inon Wet macro lens in Bali last year, but for fully lit pics (http://www.flickr.com/photos/mooseman1007/sets/), but never managed to get any dark background shots. Could someone give me an idiots guide for a compact camera/strobe setup, as the majority of the info ive found is for SLR, and obviously I cant drop my aperture to F22 ! Back to Egypt in a couple of days so could do with some advice. TTL ? Manual ? etc

Cheers

Moose

Hi Moose,

There are two main factors that create exposure in the background, ambient light and strobe. We must cut both out, but its not easy.

Ambient:

Avoid backgrounds that are brightly lit. i.e. white sand on a shallow dive & sunny day is very hard to underexpose. A bit of reef in the shadow of the sun will be easier. Start by setting the camera to the max strobe sync speed, minimum aperture, lowest iso, turn the strobes off, and shoot different areas to see what you can underexpose.

Strobe:

More often than not with macro, our strobe light reaches back beyond the subject lighting up a bit of reef etc behind. To mitigate this we:

A. Bring the strobes as close to the subject as possible, using the minimum power needed to light the subject at a given exposure. This maximizes falloff, minimizing the amount of strobe light that reaches the background. Of course this wont matter if there's a rock/coral 2 inches behind the subject so:

B. Shoot at an angle such that anything in the background is far away, generally a very low angle. This way any strobe light that does reach behind the subject can't make it to a more distant background. With macro, this can sometimes be only a couple feet.

C. Position your strobes such that light does not spill to the background. Either by using a snoot to minimize spill light or actually pointing the strobes back towards the camera housing so you only use the edge of the light to hit the subject. Of course you need to be careful of backscatter and flaring light into your lens.

Hope that helps. Cheers,

Chris

Sounds like a couple of shore dives on my own to practice are in order, could even try some snorkelling, though ambient light may be an issue. Any way of practicing this on land to get my head around it or do you need the falloff of light in the water to make it easy ?

Just need a couple of years practice fitted into the next three days on land :-)

Moose

Shooting dry is no problem.

Hunt around the house, with your housing and strobes, and set the ambient exposure as little as possible.

Plus you'll get a good arm workout!