S95 camera settings for shooting without flash

[Mr. Andersen]

I've been experimenting with taking underwater pictures with my S95, with the flash off, in an Ikelite housing.

I'm trying to figure out what the optimal camera setting is, for shooting moving targets (Such as fish), but I haven't really come to any conclusion.

I know my shutter value has to be low, or moving targets will become blurry.
Also, the F-Stop value should be as low a number as possible, to let in as much light as possible.

Any advice from someone with experience with shooting underwater pictures with the S95, with the flash off, would be appreciated.


PS) Before anyone suggest to just turn on the flash, I'm getting two well known problems when shooting pictures with the flash on: Backscatter and shadows.

Backscatter is supposed to be solveable with fitting the semi-transparent plastic sheet on the outside of the camera, but doing so makes the camera setup kinda flimsy, with the plastic sheet hanging loose and sometimes even rotating out of position.

The shadow cast by the housing apparently can't be avoided, except when taking pictures from further away and moving further away will negate the effects of the flash alltogether.

 

[00wabbit]

Your shutter value should be high not low. The faster the shutter goes off the more it will freeze the motion. A low or slow shutter speed will leave the shutter open long enough to catch the movement blur.

Low aperture + High shutter + higher iso depending on the ambient light.
Problem with higher iso is that it will start to degrade the image quality so you will have to play with it and see what you can tolerate. Probably around 640 will be ok. Maybe 800 but it won't be super crisp.

The real answer is a flash unfortunately. But not the internal flash. The internal flash is adequate for some things but to avoid backscatter and shadow and external flash mounted out to the side of the camera is better. This way it won't reflected the light off the backscatter directly back to the lens and the type of flashed used will be larger to the light can spill around the fish a bit and reduce the hard shadows. Ideally 2 lights would be best. One for the foreground and one for the background but that's getting a bit crazy for now.

Remember in photography you are not capturing the fish. You are capturing the light reflected off the fish. The more light that is present the better your shot and less light you will have to add. If there isn't a lot of light present then you need to add more.

 

[Interceptor121]

If you shoot without flash you can try a few things. Shutter priority is an option with speeds of 1/125 you start getting decent results. The camera will choose between the aperture and ISO and try to shoot with wide apertures and the lowest ISO. This could give problem without a wide angle lens however your subjects will not be blurred
Alternatively you can try Manual 1/125 Aperture what you want from your depth of field depending on far is the subject then you half press and check for -1/3 or -2/3 and then check the ISO
Remember shutter speed and aperture are what you set to have the shoot you want ISO increase noise but is better to have a picture in focus and with the right depth of field than have less noise and more blur and shallow depth of field
Good luck

 

[Altamira]

Backscatter is supposed to be solveable with fitting the semi-transparent plastic sheet on the outside of the camera, but doing so makes the camera setup kinda flimsy, with the plastic sheet hanging loose and sometimes even rotating out of position

I solved that problem by tying the plastic sheet inplace with some nylon cord. I tied the cord off to the hand strap that hooks on near the hinge.

 

[Interceptor121]

Internal flash with diffuser is only useful for macro
Anything further away you are better off with flash off
Get yourself a strobe

 

[mark260165]

Would someone please explain to me what the -1/3 or -2/3 and check the ISO that Interceptor21 wrote means and what am I looking at on my camera, (s100).
Sorry if its a novice question but I am exactly that & I feel there are no stupid questions....
Thanks
Mark

 

[Interceptor121]

Hi mark260165 sorry it sounds complex. Let me explain, when you put the camera in manual mode it does real metering of the scene. So assume you are shooting at 1/125 with aperture f5.6 which is the setting I use with the fisheye lens
I would start at ISO100 and then look at the meter bar on the right of the screen. Say that it read -1 1/3 I would move the ISO from 100 to 200 so that now it read -1/3 and the shoot
So I fix aperture and shutter speed based on the depth of field and motion of the scene and adjust the ISO accordingly.

It would be amazing if the camera did that by itself by setting the Ev and working out the ISO automatically instead this feature is available only on more expensive DSLR cameras.

 

[00wabbit]

It would be amazing if the camera did that by itself by setting the Ev and working out the ISO automatically instead this feature is available only on more expensive DSLR cameras.

I find that setting almost useless on my dslr because the camera is always going for perfect exposure so it cranks the iso up too high and the shots are very noisy. It would be nice if they had an auto iso limit. So it will use auto iso but will not exceed 800 or 1600 or whatever you are comfortable with noise wise.

 

[mark260165]

Hi mark260165 sorry it sounds complex. Let me explain, when you put the camera in manual mode it does real metering of the scene. So assume you are shooting at 1/125 with aperture f5.6 which is the setting I use with the fisheye lens
I would start at ISO100 and then look at the meter bar on the right of the screen. Say that it read -1 1/3 I would move the ISO from 100 to 200 so that now it read -1/3 and the shoot
So I fix aperture and shutter speed based on the depth of field and motion of the scene and adjust the ISO accordingly.

It would be amazing if the camera did that by itself by setting the Ev and working out the ISO automatically instead this feature is available only on more expensive DSLR cameras.

Got it, thank you very much for explaining it to me! I will try it out soon!

 

[Interceptor121]

I find that setting almost useless on my dslr because the camera is always going for perfect exposure so it cranks the iso up too high and the shots are very noisy. It would be nice if they had an auto iso limit. So it will use auto iso but will not exceed 800 or 1600 or whatever you are comfortable with noise wise.

Ev compensation should help and setting a maximum for autoiso is even on some compacts I am amazed is not a DSLR feature