S100 settings advice request

[goclimbing]

After five days of diving and shooting in Cozumel I'm still struggling to figure out how to get my lighting right with my set up.

It's the typical overwhelming blue/cyan and loss of reds/orange.

I'm setting the s-100 to underwater light balance, iso800 with flash on (to relay via the fiber optic to the Sea & Sea).

I have two more days left here so adding a red filter probably isn't an option.

Any advice... well.. I'm begging for. Or if there's a good thread I'm missing on SB simply pointing me in that direction for this discussion would be great.

 

[Dive Wananavu Fiji]

Not as much info as we could used to help but from what you have provided there sounds like a couple problems. First your ISO is too high if you're shooting with a strobe. Try bringing the ISO back down to 250. I'm assuming your shooting Program mode since you chose your ISO to be 800. The best thing is to shoot in manual mode on your camera and not every enviromental condition is going to warrant the exact settings but you can start here for shooting wide angle subjects.

White Balance Cloudy (remember you're adding in artificial light with your strobe, the underwater setting will be too much red. Shoot with the u/w white balance if you are not using a strobe.
ISO 250
Shutter speed 1/125
Aperture 4.5-5
Strobe power depends on your strobe. If you are shooting with a S&S YS-01/02 try starting with your strobe power around 2/3rds full.

Try starting here and make adjustments as necessary. When you take a picture if your background is too dark you can lengthen your shutter speed to say 1/80-1/100 If your subject is too dark you can bring the strobe power up or get closer to your subject. If everything is too dark you can open your aperture. (or vice versa for all I just listed)

If you have the front camera ring set to adjust your aperture when the camera is in Manual mode then you can easily and quickly adjust your aperture and your ISO. Set your front ring to adjust your shutter speed in Shutter Speed Priority (Tv) then if you need to adjust your shutter speed you can quickly switch over to Tv change the shutter speed and switch back to manual. Also just be sure you have force flash set on your camera to always trigger your strobe.

Welcome to the frustrating world of underwater photography.

 

[samplin]

Can you upload one of you photos so we can tell you what you are doing.
We have the same camera. Maybe not the same strobes but i am sure we can steer you in the right direction.

 

[goclimbing]

Welcome to the frustrating world of underwater photography.

horrible problems to have...

It looks like what i've basically done is set my camera to auto mode in custom (so that I could make sure some pre-sets were on when i turned the camera on [like underwater WB])

Thanks for the tips. I think they will help. I know camera and have been shooting for years. The underwater world is just so different I think I've been trying to rely too much on the camera and less on myself. But after five days if nothing else I know how to adjust the camera pretty quickly.

I'm going to try manual mode today, iso 125, shutter at 125. one problem with this canon housing is I have no easy way to control shutter speed with it (there just isn't a a way to control that particular dial). So I have f-stop control. I'll see how that goes today.

I'll post later today after the dives with some examples.

I really appreciate the response!

 

[dfx]

I'm going to try manual mode today, iso 125, shutter at 125. one problem with this canon housing is I have no easy way to control shutter speed with it (there just isn't a a way to control that particular dial). So I have f-stop control. I'll see how that goes today.

Yes there is, in fact there's 3 ways

1. Switch to Tv mode, adjust shutter speed, return to M mode. The setting will stick.
2. Press and hold RING FUNC and use the left/right arrow keys.
3. Press RING FUNC and set it to C. Then you can press RING FUNC + MENU to select which setting the front ring adjusts.

 

[goclimbing]

Yes there is, in fact there's 3 ways

1. Switch to Tv mode, adjust shutter speed, return to M mode. The setting will stick.
2. Press and hold RING FUNC and use the left/right arrow keys.
3. Press RING FUNC and set it to C. Then you can press RING FUNC + MENU to select which setting the front ring adjusts.

sweet! I like option #2.

 

[goclimbing]

not sure if the adjustments i made today have anything to do with this (probably)
1/160 sec, f5.6, iso 250. no flash and NO Lightroom magic (yet)

 

[rks]

that shot looks pretty good. I don't think you need to use manual mode, that's been a fallacy in my experience. On my G15 I get great shots and shoot primarily program mode. I do use RAW and custom white balance, where I rebalance every 5-10 feet of depth. For flash shots I get great exposures, for further shots, beyond 5 or so feet where I'm relying on ambient late I will often have to balance then again in Lightroom. I also use the two custom modes to set two custom white balances one for strobes one without. I don't know if the S100 supports this sort of operation but if it does give it a go. Normal ISO for me is 200, but I will bump this when I'm shooting without strobes, also slow sync is on allowing the shutter speed to very from sync speed.

 

[BluewaterPhoto]

GoClimbing, both of these articles should help:

Canon S100 underwater settings

Great underwater photos without a strobe

I hope that helps! - Scott

 

[coralcruiser]

I like shooting iso 100 and use f5.6 or f8 with 120 or 250 for shutter speed depending on what type of background I want.