Photos from Little Cayman

[RiotNrrd]

Just got back - photos are here, if anyone is interested:

http://www.scubaboard.com/gallery/showgallery.php?cat=1602&ppuser=0

RiotNrrd

 

[verona]

Cool. Really like your barracuda!

 

[RiotNrrd]

Thanks Verona - I thought he was really cool, and he let me get pretty close without any dirty looks.

Riot

 

[Aquamutt]

Hi, I just got back from the Caymans too and I took (I'm very much the amateur
underwater photographer) a lot of pics with my Canon S40. Most of the early
ones were too turquoise (I usually too them from a distance of 15-25 feet) and
I tried to compensate on the last days by upping the white balance, but some of
the shallower pics were too bright. I have a feeling that I can't really get your quality pics with my humble S40 without external strobes. Could you tell me what equipment you use and pass along any tips for this newbie? Thanks!

 

[verona]

aquamutt - a couple of suggestions - 15-20 feet is too far away even with a strobe. Try and get as close as you can to fill the frame. Also, to bring out the colours you are best to have a strobe or use the internal flash. there is only so much white balance can do, especially when you are deeper. I don't know about the S40 so I can't comment but hope these general tips are of use. have a browse in the forum, there is lots of advice here.

 

[RiotNrrd]

Could you tell me what equipment you use and pass along any tips for this newbie? Thanks!

Hey Aquamutt -

To echo Verona, one of the keys is getting close to your subject. Most of the shots I posted were taken from between 1 and 4 feet from the subject.

Your pics at Stingray City look good - probably partially becasue they were shallow, and you got a lot of ambient light from the sun. The deeper you get, the more difficult it is to get light on the subject from the sun, and the "thickness" of water between the sun and the subject filters our more of the low frequency light (Red, Orange, Yellow, etc....). Having a flash close to the subject replaces the sunlight, and has a much thinner "filter" since you are close to the subject.

White balance is the hardest part of this. If your camera will support RAW format, use it, and go download RawShooter (www.pixmantic.com). It's a free program for color correcitng RAWs, and it has some great tools for getting white balance right. Basically, you can pick a part of the photo and tell RawShooter to color correct so the thing you chose is "neutral gray." I'll usually color correct based on getting light grey sand, and then fine tune it by eye. You can do the same thing in Photoshop (using Adjust Levels and the eyedropper tools) but it's less intuitive (IMHO).

If you want to get into an inexpensive external flash, you can do so for about $200 with the Sunpak G-Flash, as long as you can shoot your camera in manual exposure mode (I use G-Flash, an S-70 in manual, and a Ultralight Control System tray and arm). The basic G-Flash comes with a handle bracket, but if you really want to control your light, you'll want a better way to move the strobe head around based on the subject. Here is a thread about the Sunpak G-Flash, including a picture of SeaYoda's DIY rig, and my considerably more costly but basically the same result ULCS rig (SeaYoda is a much better fabricator than I am).

http://www.scubaboard.com/showthread.php?t=128360

Good luck!

Riot