My first night dive in macro

[southernblue]

Hello All,

I decided it was time to do a night dive with my new camera set-up and see how the strobe performed with a novice behind the lens.

I went to a local boat harbour that was well protected from the weather and began my first night dive in the inky blackness of the scary depth of 3 metres:blinking:

What a buzz it was being there, i am still excited from seeing all the nightlife going about their stuff and will be doing alot more dives at this place to improve my photography skills.

Here are a couple of pics from the dive, all taken with the 400d in an ikelite housing and a single ds125 strobe with a canon 60mm macro lens, any advice is welcome.

? A little fishy

A couple of local shrimp

 

[Chris Bangs]

Nice shots.

for the real close stuff such as the first image you may want to use a higher F stop to increase the DOF.

In addition, adjusting the White Balance will reduce the reddish color cast. I attached a copy of one of the images that I adjusted simply by setting a neutral point.

Cheers

CB

 

[Carl_Fallon]

G'Day Southerblue,

Nice photos for your first night dive with your setup. I would really take what CB said on board. I think you will be blown away with the difference in image detail when your increase DOF when increasing your F-Stops. Rather than being more hit and miss with 2-4mm of DOF you will 'get' more photos than you will miss.

The bottom image has good composition. Just one thing, Where you able to get lower at all? It might have given the shrimp more stature and power in the image! You have the basis down pat with the DOF spot-on the focal point of your image. But how cool would it be to see the hairs on all of the shrimps legs, and detail in the tail from start to finish, rather than the imediate bluring just past the head. Even practice on land, infront of your tv. Take some pictures of a pencil, head on. Place marks down the shaft and play arround with some manual adjustments. You will really be able to see what works and what doesnt.

Great first go southernBlue! Well Done!

Yours Truly,
Carl Fallon

 

[southernblue]

Thanks for the tips Carl and Chris, i was rushing the dive going from one target to the next without much thought in my technique.

I did try to close down the f stop, but was fumbling in the dark with the torch and didn't have the button pressed in all the way, so all that was changing was the shutter speed

I plan on slowing down the next dive at this spot and making a bigger effort on my technique and composition.

I used a grey image from a week ago and a daytime shot at another location as my custom white balance, so i should have expected some way off color balance

Thanks for the process of the pic Chris, a big difference, i will play around with the raws and see what i can improve on.

Many thanks again for the tips

 

[fairybasslet]

Nice shots. I still haven't had the guts to try photographing on a night dive. Like you said, you fumble with the light and the camera and for me, that is too much overload. I want to buy a focusing light to take care of that, but lately, between car repairs and some legal bills, I haven't been able to spend on the fun stuff.

 

[Chris Bangs]

The corrected shots look great.
When I shoot macro, I set the shutter speed to its fastest sync speed, unless I am able to position the camera so that the subject can be photographed with a blue background. i.e. "trying to produce some artsy effect"

On night dive macro I always set the Shutter speed at the fastest sync speed so that my spotting light will not affect the image.

in addition to my gallery on this board you can find a lot of my macro work on the links below. feel free to ask specific questions on any of the images, please include to image name or link as well

http://dpforums.com/dpgallery/showgallery.php/cat/500/ppuser/22

http://s32.photobucket.com/albums/d20/chris_bangs/

Cheers

Chris

 

[Carl_Fallon]

G'Day Southern Blue,

Something that might help you out to streamline yourself while on a photography night dive is to purchase a small, single emitting LED white light with quite a bit of spread. You could rig up a way of attaching this to your housing or better still strobe arm to eliminate the need to hold your tourch on the subject as well as try and opperate your camera. (If you dont have a focusing light of course on your strobe)

This will allow you to concentrate on taking the photo, and not stress about juggeling two things together. Princeton Tec make a good sturdy one that last a long time. Just something small, white light and with a soft spread on the beam to avoid any 'Hot Spots' (over exposing) on your image, is needed to give your camera an edge to focus on, and for you to see the subject to frame it. You should be able to pick one up for about $50 bucks i am sure.

This will help you out a lot!

Yours Truly,
Carl Fallon:14: