fish portrait

I would like some comments on this one

It is a scanned slide (Sensia 100) taken with a minolta 7xi with 50mm sigma macro, ikelite housing and a single Ai strobe. F8-11, 1/60 and strobe on half power.

In the original image the fish (a dorade from the med) is bleached out a bit, in the scan more detail is reveiled. I may have mirrored the image.

what i like about this image myself is the contact with the fish and the composition (others show the fish more in the middle). a more colourfull fish would be nice. what i dont like is that the head is still a bit washed.

Although it seemed quite clear water, there are some specks of dust (maybe also from scanning) which i have not yet removed.

I see regularly spotless pics appearing here. Do you guys never have any dust on your pics, or is removal normal during processing.

Tx

Gerard

First problem and most serious I see is the face of the fish is overexposed.

The specs you see are backscatter - particles of sand and detritus that are illuminated by the strobe light.

Both of these problems are due to poor strobe placement. You should have aimed the strobe more to the right - perhaps at the tail of the fish. Spotless pics are possible with careful strobe placement but a when there are just a few spots, they can easily be removed. With the number in your shot there is not much you can do to fix it..

You do not want to aim the strobe directly at the subject, rather you want to aim the strobe so that the edge of the beam from the strobe just covers the subject.

Composition wise, you cut off the top of the dorsal fin and the tip of the pectoral fin and the tip of the caudal fin (tail). Just moving the fish slightly down and to the left would help a lot.

Next is that the center of primary subject, the fish's eye, is dead center. It usually looks better if you place the eye off center.

In addition to the last comments that is all correct.

Try to take the frame for a lower position, that way you'll have more interesting subject and better background of the water instead of the sand & rocks.

Thanks. these are the kind of comments i was searching.

Since the strobe is at its lowest, could I've better underexposed the background a bit by using a smaller f-stop. the fstop and shutter speed were selected based on the available light. This might have left the strobe to birght regardless the position.

Actually i was glad to get things focussed and got carried away with these inquisitive fish. I see that more of my pictures have the subject straight in the middle, so this will be an attention point further on. I didnt really realise this was the case here too. pity these fish arent in my backyard to practice with...

gerard

I think the strobe power was fine, just the strobe aiming was bad.

"the fstop and shutter were selected based on available light"

You can use a smaller aperature and stilll have the background exposed how ever you want it.

First select the the fstop based on artistic criteria (or minimum srobe power if you need to.)

Then expose the background by changing the shutter speed.

Then expose the forground by changing strobe power.

Also remember that pulling your strobes back from the subject can reduces the amount of light that makes it to the subject - so "power" is not just the setting on the strobe. More diffuse light can work better on pale/reflective fish too.

Lndr