Night Dive on 6/26

Im not too sure where this post goes, so if it needs to be moved that okay.

I was able to get out last Saturday evening/night for a few dives.  The conditions were not the best but it was more about learning how to use my strobe that it was about the final image.  Here are a few images that turned out to be okay. Camera kit: Olympus EPL10 + Pana 8mm + Backscatter MF1 strobe

I was trying to keep just the outed edge of my strobe lighting my subject  but I still feel like I was getting A LOT of backscatter.  I was using the angler fish strobe position; single strobe @ 12 0'clock, strobe tilted out forward. I'm wondering if I should have had the strobe pointed back at me a bit more?

Any C&C is welcomed.

Link to photos as I cant upload them here.

A single strobe is probably a bit of a stretch for a fisheye lens, particularly as the MF-1 only provides a relatively narrow beam.

A fisheye needs to have the strobes well back behind the plane of the dome as well and I think the 12 o'clock position is not ideal as the lens looks a long way up and can see particles in the strobe beam.  The anglerfish position you mention is more suited to a macro lens with a narrow field of view.  You can see you have out of focus backscatter this has to be in very close to the lens, you can see that as BG starts to get out of focus it also starts to darken a lot - this means the out of focus backscatter is in very close to the dome - and it is getting illuminated by your beam - meaning you need to get your strobes further away from the port.

This guide covers  strobe positioning quite well:  https://www.opticaloceansales.com/files/OOS-Strobe-Positioning.pdf

I think it will be easier for wide angle work to use two strobes as you are more able to illuminate everything, particularly as the beam of the strobe is smaller than the field of view of the lens , you will struggle to truly use the edges of the beam.

California is not too different from Sydney waters, a lot of particles all round - much easier to start out playing with macro and work up to wide angle.Backscatter can certainly be reduced but it's hard to eliminate.

I knew it was going to be tough conditions So I thought that the fisheye would allow me to get closer to my subjects than the macro would and that would eliminate the backscatter between me and the subject.  I completely had a brain fart about how much backscatter would be seen due to the wide field of view.

9 hours ago, Dann-Oh said:

I knew it was going to be tough conditions So I thought that the fisheye would allow me to get closer to my subjects than the macro would and that would eliminate the backscatter between me and the subject.  I completely had a brain fart about how much backscatter would be seen due to the wide field of view.

Don't get me wrong, I've seen people shooting fisheyes in Sydney and it is indeed possible to get a loss less backscatter, but everything needs to be going right for you to achieve it.

16 hours ago, ChrisRoss said:

Don't get me wrong, I've seen people shooting fisheyes in Sydney and it is indeed possible to get a loss less backscatter, but everything needs to be going right for you to achieve it.

I guess Ill have to go back out to dive and practice, what a chore ;-).

9 hours ago, Dann-Oh said:

I guess Ill have to go back out to dive and practice, what a chore ;-).

By going right I guess I also mean two strobes.  Your other alternative is to try to shoot against the reef, the backscatter is not so obvious then.

13 hours ago, ChrisRoss said:

By going right I guess I also mean two strobes.  Your other alternative is to try to shoot against the reef, the backscatter is not so obvious then.

I have a second strobe but I'm still learning how to use one and understand exposing for a flash. I don't use flash on my topside photography either so the learning is going slow.