Diver Silhouette

Blogged by Simon on August 16, 2009 1:32pm | Last updated by Simon on February 03, 2010 12:00pm | Category: Underwater Photography | Get a Print Get a Print |

Diver SilhouetteFor the past 4 weeks, I have been working on getting better results with wide angle lenses. When looking at my previous work, I wasn’t happy with the amount of backscatter, hotspots and editing I had to do as a result. After re-reading Martin Edge’s recommendations on this, I came to three conclusions. First, my strobes are positioned too close to the camera and this creates hotspots in the image. Second, I was placing them level with and slightly below the dome port where they needed to be placed noticeably above and behind to properly illuminate the scene. Third, at the same time they needed to point slightly outwards to avoid backscatter.

On Saturday, I set out to test this on a boat dive at North Head. Conditions were good, but not great, with about 10-15m visibility and visible particles in the water. The first thing I noticed is that the camera operates much “heavier” when both flash heads are extended this way and also creates more drag. But what a difference it made! Backscatter is pretty much gone from all the images and with it the need to use the dreaded clone stamp. I have to admit I had nagging doubts whether the kind of tropical water clarity i was after would be possible in Sydney at all – it is so good to be wrong sometimes :)

This photo was shot at f/11 for 1/60s in 16m of depth. I composed it after several similar images I have seen in magazines with a foreground subject in the lower third and a diver against a sunball in the upper part of the image. Backscatter is reduced to a bare minimum and while the end result isn’t perfect and there are still blown out highlights, it feels good when you learn something.

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