Tips Photographing Squid Eyes

My problem is when I photograph squid I typically blowout their reflective eyes and I’m not sure how to prevent this.  Can anyone provide some setting tips / suggestions for capturing images of squids without blowing out the eyes using a DSLR camera.  I am using 2 z330 INON strobes so any suggestions for strobe positions would also be appreciated.  Currently my strobes are positioned in the 10 and 2 o’clock position.  

Sample pics might help diagnose problem

Show us a picture with your settings.

Would shiny beads, or even toy marbles of the right color, be good subjects for you to find good settings for your camera and strobes? 

Thank you to those who responded.  I uploaded 2 sample images.  Both were shot using a Nikon D850 with a 60mm lens.  Both were also shot in relatively shallow water (20-30 feet).  

My strobes are set for manual exposure and I've been trying to compensate for the ambient light so they were set to around -3 (I'm not positive on this setting).  

Let me know if any additional information would be helpful. 

Hi, my suggestion would be to photo the squid in darker water, say in the late evening, and to aim the strobes a bit more to each side, maybe 10, 2, but also 9, 3 positions, and the flash two or three clicks less bright.  

For practice re the eyes, you might try shiny beads as in a necklace, toy marbles or ball bearings, and at a bit of a distance, some Xmas tree shiny globe ornaments.  

Please keep us posted of your interesting project.

There's various tricks you can try in post processing to deal with this as well.  The eyes are blown in these shots so you can't do much with them there.  A start is to pull back highlights to the maximum in raw processing.  If you have access to processing software that allows layers you can develop the image twice in RAW once for the overall shot and again for the eyes and then combine the two in photoshop or equivalent using layer masks.   It's quite quick to do once you get your head around it.

This link is the best I've found to explain it, it has disappeared from the web but still to found on the wayback machine web archive:

http://web.archive.org/web/20060716001252/http://www.keiko-ni.com/keikosite/equiptech/digital/dynamicrange/dynamrng1.html

It talks about taking separate shots in camera, but with modern digital cameras you can just develop it twice in raw and get a good dynamic range extension.

A good combination of answers from Chris and Kraken deM. 

Like them, i'd suggest slightly less strobe power and maybe playing around with a very slightly faster shutter speed.  The latter would darken the blues behind the subject a little and bring out the colours more; then as Chris says, dial back the Highlights slightly using, if you have it, Lightroom - or some such.

That should do the trick. Let us know how you get on... and enjoy Bonaire! 

To get a good working feel for ones camera and lights, it is a useful to practice dry runs at home.  For example, to simulate shooting a small squid in the ocean,  I modeled a small green squid, or fish, with a big shiny eye using a piece of lettuce and a 7 mm ball bearing.  The photo shows surface detail of the damaged ball bearing - surrogate "eye", with good "body" color and detail for the lettuce "fish". It would have been sharper if I had not had so much coffee, but you get the idea: test and refine details of one's photo technique using quick and inexpensive simulations.

@lbaldwin99

The above commentary is spot on...

I will add just one thing (more as explanation than adding something new). When shooting against a blue water background we're usually taught (early on) that your shutter speed will control your background hues (light vs. dark, and some foreground details). As some people say, "dialing in the blue..."

You then use your aperture (and strobe power) to control the amount of light hitting your subject in the foreground. 

There are edge cases to this but is generally a way to think about your situation. As mentioned above, I would definitely shoot aiming for a darker blue background (by shooting with a faster shutter speed, if possible). One challenge here is that there is a limit (using strobes) on the sync speed with the camera, so this will only work to some degree. 

In your case your background is light in color (both because you are fairly shallow and because of your aperture setting), and then we add in your strobes which are lighting the foreground (in this case slightly blowing out the eye(s), which are already "light" because of the natural light in the scene).

As others have said - If you are shooting these subjects shallow I would be shooting at the fastest shutter speed in which I could get the strobes to sync (to help w/the background color), and then for this scenario I would be looking to shoot higher than f10/f11 (if I'm below the squid(s) I might try to get to f16/f18) and then definitely dial down your strobes (while also trying to paint with the edges of the strobe light cones, not aiming the strobes right at the subject - because there is light drop off on the edges of the cone vs. center). 

Having said all this - daytime shooting of this highly [highly] reflective animal is tough, and you will likely end up needing to post process (potentially darkening the image, background separately from the subject) to get good results (without the perfect shot).

Shooting them on a blackwater dive is tough for other reasons, but it's much easier to get a distinctive (contrasting) background.

EDIT: should have added, move your strobes to closer to 9-3 positions as well. Your strobes may very well be closer to your subject than your lens, which makes this a tiny bit harder for you.

Thank you all for your input.  Based on your feedback, it looks like increasing my shutter speed to 1/250, stepping down my ISO, increasing my aperture and dialing down my strobes will help.  in addition pointing my strobes outward and moving them back slightly may also help to prevent the blowout in the reflective eyes.  It will be much easier to correct the squid / water coloring in post if they come out too dark than to try to recover the blown out eyes.  I will also practice on some reflective objects to help fine tune my settings and strobe position.  

@lbaldwin99

Let us know how it goes...

On 9/3/2021 at 10:41 PM, TimG said:

A good combination of answers from Chris and Kraken deM. 

Like them, i'd suggest slightly less strobe power and maybe playing around with a very slightly faster shutter speed.  The latter would darken the blues behind the subject a little and bring out the colours more; then as Chris says, dial back the Highlights slightly using, if you have it, Lightroom - or some such.

That should do the trick. Let us know how you get on... and enjoy Bonaire! 

I don't use Adobe camera raw  these days, - I use Capture One Pro for my raw conversions, so it may behave differently.  On my system I find I need big moves on highlights to see much difference and if the highlights are clipped it won't reduce exposure on the the clipped areas at all _ I expect that is fairly common among systems and to bring them out of clipping you need to reduce exposure.

I think it needs a combination of settings/strobe position and highlight recovery.   I find that reflective subjects can vary brightness quite a lot as the angles change so it seems a certain element of luck is needed.  On your strobe positions I expect having them further out from the dome should also help as it is harder for the light to reflect back to the camera with the angles involved.

Thank you to everyone who provided recommendations.  I stumbled across a solution that may work for me in most instances.  Yesterday when I was diving, I was having problems with my strobes so I started shooting in ambient light.  2 very curious squid came over to check out my hubby and me and let me fire off a number of shots.  I was extremely pleased when I looked at the images in LR as the squid eyes came out nearly perfect in every shot.  Typically we encounter squid in the shallows in the Caribbean so this solution should work in most encounters (barring night dives of course).  Here are a few shots where I only fine tuned the overall white balance.

Congratulations!  All three photos are excellent, #2 is outstanding, my favorite.  I will try to use natural light on my next mid-day dive.  Please post more photos as you take them.

Thank you so much Kraken de Mabini.  I’d be interested in seeing how your shots turn out.  Shooting without the strobes was great!!  I didn’t have to worry about the settings or positioning the strobes.   Plus no backscatter in the images.   After manually setting my white balance, all I had to do was fire (and work with my camera settings of course).  

Interesting point about the white balance, it would have taken me a while to realize I had to reset it. Please, what Kelvin value did you use?   

I'm not sure of the Kelvin value.  I should have said I set a custom white balance, which will vary at depths.  I am so impressed by the ease of shooting and quality of the images.  There is very little post processing I will need to do on these photos.  I will definitely by using the custom white balance in the shallows more frequently going forward.  I hope this helps!!

Here are a couple additional photos you might enjoy.