Need help on Oly 5060 with Ikelilte DS50

I'm having trouble taking wide angle shots. Getting a lot of backscatter...what can i do to make to lose them. What am i doing wrong? Helllllllllllllp!

It is very tough to do wide angle with a single strobe, unless the water is near perfectly clear, or if you can deal with only lighting one side.

In general, for wide angle, you want to put the strobes back even with, or slightly behind the plane of the camera. And you want to try to not light water, directly in front of the lens - between the lens and subject.

Check these out:

http://www.kelpfish.net/strobe.swf

http://www.kelpfish.net/tip_edge_light.htm

Hope this helps.

Don

They are several things you can do to help reduce the back scatter problem.

1. Strobe Direction - For wide angle it is easiest just to make sure the strobe is pointing directly ahead. Do not try to point the strobe at the subject. This allows the edge of the light beam to light the subject and not include too many particles.

2. Strobe Power - Select a camera aperture that allows you to use as much ambient light as possible to minimise the light output of the strobe. The strobe should provide 'fill in' only to bring back the colours.

3. Use wide angle lenses - This gets you closer to the subject. Less water between camera lens and the subject means less water partcles for you to worry about.

Using above techniques can allow you to take wide angle shots that make the water look clear even in less than perfect conditions.

Incidently I would disagree with the poster above. The more strobes you use the more chance you have of introducing back scatter into images. I have found best results using a single wide angle strobe for most shots works fine. I actually prefer two strobes for macro only. Maybe a bit backward but works for me

Sorry, Gazzer, but Don hit it on the head.

For wide angle, especially with particulate in the water, 2 strobes is almost a necessity. You need the strobes out wide on long arms, and angled in a way that the light from each BARELY intersects at the subject.

This will avoid lighting the junk in the water between the lens and the fish, in most cases making the water "look" cleaner.

If you try this with a single strobe, you will have trouble completely lighting the subject without also lighting the water column, as well as having a pretty harsh shadow behind the subject.