TimG wrote:
Nice work. Shots like this aren't so easy - especially for the diver who has to be in just the right position and hold it while you take the photo! And, in this shot, in a dry suit too.
You have got the diver's eye nicely in focus and, importantly (and not always easy either!), the eyes are open! And you have a good balance between the focus of the diver's eye and the reef. The torchlight works well too
Thanks! That's what I was trying to capture, so it's nice to hear that I got it somewhat right.
TimG wrote:
You have a fair bit of "empty green" in the top left of the picture and it would be good to try and position the diver in that part of the image which would give it a nice balance. If you can get the diver to exhale just before you take the pic you can then get a nice bubble stream just clear of the diver's eyes and face. This really puts the image "underwater".
On processing, if you are using, say, Lightroom, you might want to try de-highlighting the left of the picture and de-shadowing a bit the left side to get more detail into the diver.
Good point about the large stretch of empty background. On some of the other shots, (e.g. the neighboring one in my stream with dead man's fingers, but without diver), I had some dark shadows from the formations behind giving a bit of structure to the negative space. I think it worked, but unfortunately that shot was without diver. Good tip about the exhalation and the bubble stream, I'll try experimenting with that when I've gotten a little more experience in getting half-decent shots with a model.
I'm using LR5 for processing, and I deliberately pulled the shadows down, particularly on the diver, to reduce the impact of the ISO noise. I might try a bit more aggressive noise reduction instead.
TimG wrote:
For a first go with your buddy, I'd say you did pretty well. [...] I reckon usually about a dozen shots to get the image right.
Heh, you haven't seen all my previous attempts that I've canned 
That's quite a bit more than just a dozen...
coinee wrote:
In my opinion it may have been beneficial to use an even wider lens, and getting the model closer so there's more light.
Well ,you have to play with the toys you have, and a fisheye hasn't made it onto my budget quite yet. So all I've got is my 9-18, and the 12-50 that came with the camera. I've cropped the picture somewhat, though, so I might try a slightly different crop
coinee wrote:
ISO 800 is already borderline too noisy for my taste - on an E-M5 anyway. You can probably get it a little smoother by adding in some 'Luminance Noise Reduction' in the 'Detail' section of Lightroom.
In that light, 800 was the bare minimum. I was considering adding some more luminance noise reduction it, but chose to pull the shadows instead to preserve sharpness and acuity. That might not have been the best solution, so as I said, I'll try playing with the noise reduction instead.
coinee wrote:
As Tim already said, the negative space is quite a bit of empty green (I like the color by the way) maybe try shooting from a little lower next time and have the model nearer the top?
Good point even though I already consider myself pretty lucky to have gotten my model where he was. We haven't quite worked out a good hand signal system for directing him. So we've got a job before us, working out how I'm going to be able to direct him in a way that makes him understand what I'm trying to say (after being able to capture his attention, since he's primarily a diver and only secondarily my model 
).
coinee wrote:
That being said, getting this good a shot in what I'd expect to be pretty low visibility: Kudos, good sir!
Thank you very much. The viz wasn't too bad, somewhat below average for the time of the year (say, like 10m), but the light was p!ss-poor. That was another reason for the high ISO value; I wanted to capture some of the ambient light to give a bit of atmosphere to the shot, so I was stuck with ISO 800+ and f/4...
(EDIT: Multi-quote didn't work, so I had to reformat the pot to make it readable)
