Kona Aggressor Shots

Here is the "Photography" section of my trip report to be posted in the Travel section.

Photography

Several of the crew members, Captain Rob and Pam, are award winning photographers and wonderful and giving you tips and advice. Both produce great videos and slide shows of the week. The camera table is fair sized but with 5 photographers in the group it was getting a little cramped. Due to heavy rain and rough seas leading up to our arrival there was a fair amount of particles in the water. Surge is always an issue in Hawaii and this week there was fairly heavy surge at most of the sites. The combination of backscatter, surge and fast moving subjects made it a challenge.

I found that I was using my 60mm for most shots due this combo. Also like the 18-35mm for general shots. This was the first trip with the 10.5mm. It is a great lens but you need to get really, REALLY CLOSE. The turtle shots were taken with this lens and I was no more than a 10-16inches from the turtles. This will be a great lens for whale sharks and wrecks. I even like the fisheye effect for some shots

A fellow photographer, Mark, gave me the piece of advice for the week. He had won the trip via a photo contest and is a doing a book on the Maldives, incredible shots. He runs a D100 is a Nexus housing with four Inon Z220 strobes, yes count them 4. Formally trained as an abstract painter Mark said “it is not about blasting the subject with light, what is important is filling the area around the subject with light”. He use’s 4 strobes for WA and 3 for macro. The clarity and depth of color of his shots really has me thinking about adding a 3rd strobe.

Had a chance to use the new Fisheye focus light, WOW. It produces a very even circle of light. At max power it lit up much more of the reef than the large Light Cannons, though it does not have the range/distance. With the ability to adjust the output it made an excellent focus and dive light. Only problem is with the charger which will have to go back to the mfg.

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Hey Martin,

Great shots. Glad you had an awesome time. I have been contemplating multiple strobes for a long time but my hesitancy with macro is that I like to get close, I mean to the max the camera and lens combination will give me, and often I can only fit one strobe ro light the subject. However, not all macro shots are like that and those are what I want to experiment with.

Camera work okay? I bet you spent an inumerable amount of time making sure o-rings were clean and seated properly

Talk to you soon.

Joe Belanger

Yo Joe,

Without a doubt really slowing down and double checking everything. Everything worked well. As mentioned just need to get the battery charger for the Fisheye light fixed. Oh and eventually buy back-up body.

From what I saw from Mark's work he has no problem getting in close to small stuff. Mark had one main arm coming off each handle then it would make a Y split. With four strobes he had the top strobes closer to 11 and 1 and the lower strobes just below 9 and 3. The key w/WA is the way he points the lower strobe heads out to get wide coverage. In WA his strobes where only about 1 foot out from his housing. Now this might change if he was shooting really big stuff.

For Macro he has two strobes in the standard spots and uses the third on a long extension ranging between the 11 and 1 positions, casting light down on the subject. For the turtles he had an arm that must of reached 3 feet out and over the subject. He was using diffusers on all strobes and on two he was playing with colored filters, his favorite a “smoke/grayish” filter.

In addition to this he had a fill light much like an L&M Mod light and at night he added another extension with two UK Mini Lights. Now there is no arguing with his results, as good as any published work I have seen. I’m sure he is a wiz at Photoshop but he has a great “eye”.

In fact here is a pic of his set-up

You are right with your observations about strobe lighting.

DD always said: Paint your subject with light. I guess it says it all.

Using diffuser on strobes is another trick that many pros use. Might not be advisable in all conditions but from my experience, most desirable 80% of the time in my style of photography.

Look at the evolution of many published pros. Lighting is usuaslly the main difference in their images. Takes a little while to master the basics but once you have them and start "working" with the light and truly "paint" your subject, means you are getting there.

Quality of light is more important than the megapower of your strobes. Obviously you need power but not enough beginners pay attention to qualitative aspect of lighting as opposed to the quantitative obsession we can observe.

My $0.02

Michel