Show me your ISO

Gday Guys, newish to the forum, been reading alot, now I have some questions..

I just got a Nexus housing for my D70, Duel YS90's, 60mm, 12-14 and the 17-80 lenes, with all the ports, gears and all the hoha.

AND I LOVE IT, I have worked with Aquatica for a long time and no thanks, not after seeing the difference.

I was wondering what ISO do you guys shoot at, from moving from a 5050 in an Ike housing, to the DSLR underwater I now have a heap more choices..

What do you recommend, and in what situations etc ?

Thanks for your time and help!

I find that the lowest ISO is my preferance (in your case 200) - unless there is a compelling reason to do otherwise. For example, if you are shooting ambient light or need to stop movement due to slow shutter speeds, I might up the ISO a little. The D70 has a useable 1600 (particularly in conjunction with NeatImage/Noise Ninja), but I prefer to keep it below 400 unless there is a photographic necessity. ie. I can't get the shot I've got in mind any other way.

I would agree. Most stuff, especially with a strobe, you can shoot at a low ISO - I usually shoot at ISO 100, unless it's ambient light. Your strobes will do a heck of a good job of lighting up the scene.

I use my D70 almost exclusively at ISO 200. That's faster than any film I ever shot underwater and fine for most situations. I have upped the ISO occasionally for ambient light shots but more as an experiment than anything else. I did get some decent shots at 1000 but there is more noise.

Talking about ISO, this is slightly off topic, but I'd be very interested in seeing some ambient light high(~1600) ISO shots. I know someone posted some of a wreck interior a while ago, and that looked great.

Has anyone used high ISO for shooting dolphins, rays, sharks with no strobe? (That is taking the picture with no strobe - most dolphins, rays and sharks don't own a strobe )

It was raining topside and dark at 60 feet. So I shot a natural light shot of a wreck at ISO 1600 in P mode at F 2.8 and 1/15 of a second.

The wreck had been broken up by the hurricanes last fall and the Captain wanted me to take a picture so he could see what it looked like now. But it was so dark down there it was practically a night dive. So I tried something I had never tried before, maximum ISO, expecting to get more noise than signal. Surprise, at least to me, it worked. Not a great picture, but useable for it's purpose.

Hi Peter, took the liberty to toy a bit with your wreck shot, converted to B&W and adjusted level and contrast, I do this often to wreck shot since they are pretty monochromatic by nature, switching to B&W get's rid of color noise and makes it look like film grain, something we associate more naturally to. You can raise the ISO a lot more this way with out trashingthe shot.

Regard's

Raise your hand if you've shot ISO1600 on a dive by accident:

James raises his hand.

I'll post some shots when I get back to my home computer. That was with the S2pro.

Cheers

James

Half raised hand, got to 800 ISO by mistake, humm! was sure happy about the depth of field, that is until I woke up and got my reality check

Cheers

Jean, thanks for the reminder on black and white. I haven't done this recently. But when I have it's for reef scenes and wrecks where the color seems to get in the way. Since it also helps reduce noise I now have two reasons to consider black and white.

Again, thanks for the reminder.

Raise your hand if you've shot ISO1600 on a dive by accident:

Matt raises...two hands (yes, that means twice )

ISO1600 with the 20D:

I do, however, try to use ISO100 as the norm.

~Matt Segal

I'll raise my hand.

I accidentally shot at ISO 800 last weekend (normally I set ISO to 100). I was shooting macro in manual mode and was annoyed to find myself overexposing shots at my normal f16 or f22. Even after adjusting to f32 or so I still did not realize my mistake. It must have been the narcosis kicking in.

Thanks Guys,

It really inforces the fact that I was doing the right thing, I just thought I would be able to get away with more 400 or so with no noise, and means I do not have to blow the poor fish away with the 90's.

Hmmm time to go diving!

Raise your hand if you've shot ISO1600 on a dive by accident:

 

 

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

Bing! I was messing with the AutoISO feature one day, and forgot to turn it off before diving. Opps.

I have used ISO400 for Wide Angle work in the past with very good results. Good lighting is a little bit easier to achive and the noise on the D70 was not noticable at all.

Dave

My hand is also raised <_<

I used the auto ISO in my D70 in an early morning dive when we looked for Hammerheads, we didn't found any , but I forgot this setting for the next macro dive.

Peter, where is the wreck shot taken, in tropical waters or up north somewhere?

Looks like the noise isn't too bad. I wonder if the difference between the d70 and 20d would be noticable uw.

The 20D should be considerably better....

The 20D should be considerably better....

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

huh?

Looks like the noise isn't too bad. I wonder if the difference between the d70 and 20d would be noticable uw.

The 20D should be considerably better....

huh?

William was making the point that in noise comparisons, the 20D would do noticeably better than the D70 for a given ISO.

~Matt Segal

Why are my strobes so strong today ?????? <_< , it keeps clipping areas while I am at f29 .............. OOPS

DuikKees is raising his hand