Stabilizer or faster lens?

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olegk

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Location
Israel
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I'm doing available-light underwater photography, and I'm in the need of fighting motion blur with shutter time reaching 1/30 sec.

What should work better underwater: f/3.5 lens with stabilizer, or f/2.8 lens without stabilizer?

Today I have the 1st option and would like to improve. Higher ISO is not an option for now.

Thank you in advance,
Oleg.
 
At 1/30 things will be tough even with image stabilization. The faster lens is only 2/3 a stop better, why not just up the ISO or shoot at 1/60 and boost it in LR.
Bill
 
At 1/30 things will be tough even with image stabilization. The faster lens is only 2/3 a stop better, why not just up the ISO or shoot at 1/60 and boost it in LR.
Bill

I already followed all your suggestions - I stay at -0.7 exposure compensation and I push things a lot in post-processings. I'm shooting at ISO 400, and I don't want to raise ISO any more on my Nex C3 - I'm recovering very weak red channel.
And, of course, the whole reason for me to ask this question is because 1/30 is tough even with stabilizer.

I understand that I cannot fully resolve the problem by adding 2/3 stop, but if it should increase my success rate, I take it.
So, what do you think, should it (increase my success rate)?

Regards,
Oleg.
 
Shake blur will depend on the focal lenght. If you shoot very wide you can skip the stabiliser if you use a lens equivalent to 15mm
But for motion blur 1/30 is slow and so is 1/60 a strobe freezes motion at those speeds without a strobe you need over 1/125 for almost anything
 
Shake blur will depend on the focal lenght. If you shoot very wide you can skip the stabiliser if you use a lens equivalent to 15mm
But for motion blur 1/30 is slow and so is 1/60 a strobe freezes motion at those speeds without a strobe you need over 1/125 for almost anything
This. I rarely shoot below 1/100 even with a strobe due to the challenges you get with motion.
You might get away with slow shutters on land where you have a solid footing and movement is limited to 2 axis. In the water, with your movement in 3 axis, the subject (atleast often) moving in 3 axis and the subject often moving fairly fast everything gets a bit more tricky..
 
So, it sounds like faster lens is the recommendation. In my case we are talking about replacing Sony 18-55 f/3.5-5.6 by Sigma 19/2.8 . I know, _the_ solution would be a full-frame camera and higher ISO, but I'd like to stay on budget.

Thanks a lot,
Oleg.
 
The solution is high ISO as shooting behind a dome requires small apertures that's why you don't find ports to accommodate certain type of lenses

Interesting... Could you please explain why shooting behind a dome requires small apertures? I thought it's opposite - you don't want port glass to become visible in macro shots, thus maybe it's worth reducing DOF; but this means avoiding too small an aperture.
 
Small aperture because the dome is curved and if you don't close it you have soft corners. Larger domes give better results for the same reason
 
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Nitpick: it's not diffraction, it's that the low DOF at large apertures throws the edges and corners of the curved virtual image out of focus.

Diffraction may be an issue at small apertures (typically smaller that f/16-f/22 on a dSLR, larger for smaller sensor cameras/bodies)

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