Hints for using DS51 with Canon G10?

[scubajen]

I just picked up a used Ikelite housing and DS51 strobe for the Canon G10. I am only testing it dry so far, but I have the f-stop cranked to 8.0 and the shutter speed at 1/500, and it looks like everything is still getting blown out. I have tried the manual setting of 2 stops of underexposure. I have tried the various settings on the strobe from TTL to -2.5. Nothing is helping. Anything white is lost to blow-out oblivion. Hints?

[mpenders]

I've been shooting underwater with a G10 for a few years now, but I use a pair of S&S YS90 strobes that have a bit more control (compared to the DS51) as to how much flash is produced. Positioning of the strobe(s) can make a huge difference. Pointing the stobe directly at your subject may not be the best technique, depending on what you're trying to accomplish. Here's some good how-to information on this: http://www.uwphotographyguide.com/under ... ositioning.

I'm expecting Scubie Doo to reply to this, as he shot with your exact setup for awhile. I seem to recall that he was pretty frustrated with the results TTL was giving him, and abandoned it completely in favor of shooting in full Manual.

You didn't mention what ISO you're using. For macro work I'm either in ISO 80 or 100. F8 is a good start, with a shutter speed of 125-500.

One nice feature of the G10 is the ability to save 2 custom settings (C1 and C2). It's very convenient to be able to set them up to easily switch settings from macro to wide angle and back, depending on what you have found to shoot.

Have fun - you have a great setup that several of us enjoy using.

Mike

[scubajen]

Thanks, Mike. Yeah, I didn't mention I have been using Sea & Sea strobes for a long time. I love them. I may end up reselling this Ikelite set up. I bought it for the housing and the strobe came with. I had always thought that is supposed to be a good strobe. But perhaps positioning is one good place to make adjustments!

[Scubie Doo]

I would look at the ISO, as mike mentioned. Also, do you have the diffuser on it? And is the cameras on board flash turned off? I never used the TTL feature, it always seemed to overexpose the photos. Finally, I would take this diving before I made a final determination. My topside practice shots were usually blown out, but once underwater I could easily tweak the strobe position to get the lighting I wanted. I dove this same rig for a long time with nice results

Jesse

[scubajen]

Thanks, Scubie Doo! I have the ISO at 80, and yes to diffuser. The on-board flash does not actually fire when I have the strobe attached to the hot mount. But I will certainly give it a try in the water to see how it performs -- including backing off the strobe a bit.
Thanks!

[Scubie Doo]

Thanks, Scubie Doo! I have the ISO at 80, and yes to diffuser. The on-board flash does not actually fire when I have the strobe attached to the hot mount. But I will certainly give it a try in the water to see how it performs -- including backing off the strobe a bit.
Thanks!

Sounds like you have it dialed in. I have shot with the DS51 for the past three years. I even shoot with one on my DSLR rig. I like the sync cord attachment and light weight. Also, if you every flood the battery compartment, you can simply flush it with fresh water and then rinse it with rubbing alcohol. I'd give it a shot before selling it. Feel free to post some photos with the results. Good luck out there :-)

[nwscubamom]

I know I'm late to the party, but I've been shooting a G-9 with an Ikelite housing and the DS-51 strobe for years, with great results! Once in awhile I've had a problem with it blowing out. I sent in the strobe for repairs, but they could not get the strobe to duplicate the problem. I conclude it may have been either faulty rechargeable batteries, or some weird sync cord problem.

Make sure when you turn on the strobe, and then the camera, that you have a red lightning bolt in the viewfinder indicating that the TTL is all connected and ready to roll. If that does not appear, you will likely get blown out exposures.

I have a custom setting programmed in. Basically it is:
TV (shutter priority): 1/125th sec
ISO 200
White balance to cloudy
Macro
Exposure -1/3

Let me know if you're still having problems.
- Janna

[H20doctor]

greatfull diver also shot with the G10 , i am also a G10 owner, but havent gotten a underwater housing for it as of yet

[dphershman]

I agree with Janna here, if its a hardware issue it's likely related to the sync cord or perhaps even the circuitry of the DS51 itself. I have two dive buddies who use the Canon G12 with ikelite strobes set to TTL. Andy uses a single DS 161 while Mark uses a pair of DS51 strobes. Both get excellent results, although my feeling is that Andy's D161 despite being much more powerful than even two DS51s gives better TTL exposure due to better internal circuitry ($$$). You might call Ikelites tech support number, they're quite helpful in diagnosing problems over the phone.

Having said that however, blown out whites typically are a common issue in all UW shots, especially with small sensor cameras. If you shoot a white Nudibranch sitting on a dark object (like a seaweed leaf) the camera will overcompensate the exposure and blow out the Nudibranch. Alternatively, if you shoot a fish in the foreground with dark water in the background the fish will be lit up like a ghost. neither of these instances are the cameras fault, its just the way the metering system works. the camera evaluates the average brightness of a scene, so if your intended subject lies above that average you'll get blown out images.

The only sure fire way to deal with this is to take the time to manually adjust your strobe and/or camera settings until you are able to get the right exposure. I know that if my background is darker than my subject I'll crank down the strobe exposure compensation dial on the back of the housing before taking the shot. It's also better to shoot in RAW format rather than JPEG as you'll have more latitude to adjust your images later on.

As for settings my buddies and I generally set our cameras to the following settings in manual mode.

ISO 100
Shutter speed 1/125
F8 for macro, f5.6 for wide angle. (We adjust the aperture in wide angle shots to larger apertures to allow a water background to show green instead of black).
RAW mode
AUTO white balance (no special white balance settings are needed in RAW mode as that adjustment is done in post processing)

These are just guidelines really, they're only quoted here to provide an insight on one way of doing exposures.

Dan

I know I'm late to the party, but I've been shooting a G-9 with an Ikelite housing and the DS-51 strobe for years, with great results! Once in awhile I've had a problem with it blowing out. I sent in the strobe for repairs, but they could not get the strobe to duplicate the problem. I conclude it may have been either faulty rechargeable batteries, or some weird sync cord problem.

Make sure when you turn on the strobe, and then the camera, that you have a red lightning bolt in the viewfinder indicating that the TTL is all connected and ready to roll. If that does not appear, you will likely get blown out exposures.

I have a custom setting programmed in. Basically it is:
TV (shutter priority): 1/125th sec
ISO 200
White balance to cloudy
Macro
Exposure -1/3

Let me know if you're still having problems.
- Janna

[scubajen]

Thanks for the recent replies! I've been meaning to return here and post some comments and photos.
I have now dived this rig three times and I've gone back and forth between it and my cheaper Canon housing with the Sea and Sea strobes.

I have noticed that only having one DS51 seems to be a major limitation -- especially with the flex arm it came with. I often cannot get the strobe where I want it to be.
Next, I typically crank the shutter speed and f-stop way up, and turn the strobe to the lowest power setting, then I am controlling the light by the placement of the strobe. Again -- not something I like. If I want the strobe in one spot but it is blowing out the shot and I have to move the thing to reduce the amount of light, now my shadows are places I don't want them or I'm getting backscatter.
Finally, what I noticed with one strobe (or is it the DS51 itself?), is that the light often looks really warm - yellow. I wonder if this is because I'm only using one?

So after using the housing several times now and going back and forth between my rigs, I think I've decided to keep the housing and get sync cords for my Sea and Sea strobes, which I have a great deal of control over and have been very pleased with. I'll sell the Ikelite strobe and strobe arm.

Finally, I keep intending to post some photos here that I've taken with this set up -- both good ones and ones that show the yellow light I'm talking about. I'm just behind on everything! For now, I do have a series of red octopus posted here (some of the photos are better than others, but I'm telling a story so had to use what I had): www.seajen.com.

Thanks for input, everyone!
-jen

[scubajen]

I posted a few photos at this site.

https://plus.google.com/photos/11206422 ... 8vLs4f3zwE

Some I am happy with, some look yellow to me. I am starting to think the yellow light is just because the rig only has a single strobe. Which I will be selling.

[dphershman]

I posted a few photos at this site.

https://plus.google.com/photos/11206422 ... 8vLs4f3zwE

Some I am happy with, some look yellow to me. I am starting to think the yellow light is just because the rig only has a single strobe. Which I will be selling.

Its not really a strobe color issue but a white balance issue. The color balance of the strobe is 'daylight' whereas the color balance of your camera may be set to something else. If you're shooting in jpg format experiment with shooting in either 'daylight' or 'flash' WB settings.

Are you using the DS51 via a slave or with ttl on a sync cord? I found that when I used a canon point and shoot with a slave strobe the pictures tended to be yellow just like yours. I thinks that's because the camera anticipates WB balance better when it can 'talk' with the external strobe via the sync cord. Play with the wb adjustments in whatever processing software you're using and you should be able to get the colors looking more natural. In either Photoshop or Lightroom you just click on something gray to white (neutral) with a WB eyedropper and the colors will adjust themselves. This process is better if you shoot in RAW format than in jpeg.

Dan

[scubajen]

Ah, got it.
I actually have no post-processing software. Am about to get Photoshop... eventually.
I've also never shot in RAW, assuming it will slow things down. I suppose I could try.

[dphershman]

Ah, got it.
I actually have no post-processing software. Am about to get Photoshop... eventually.
I've also never shot in RAW, assuming it will slow things down. I suppose I could try.

Don't use Photoshop, use Adobe Lightroom instead. Its also a lot less expensive ($100 vs $700). I use Lightroom 99% of the time, Photoshop CS6 1% of the time.

RAW photos won't slow you down in modern photo processing programs, especially if you have a computer that's not more than a few years old.

Dan

[scubajen]

I actually have Lightroom. I bought it after talking to other divers. But after taking a short class in Photoshop i know the limitations of Lightrrom. You can do a lot more with Photoshop to individual elements of photos. There is no masking with Lightroom. After learning this i didnt understand why people recommended Lightroom. Perhaps you can shed some light (haha) on that for me?

[dphershman]

I actually have Lightroom. I bought it after talking to other divers. But after taking a short class in Photoshop i know the limitations of Lightrrom. You can do a lot more with Photoshop to individual elements of photos. There is no masking with Lightroom. After learning this i didnt understand why people recommended Lightroom. Perhaps you can shed some light (haha) on that for me?

Several years ago I was introduced to a software engineer from Adobe who was one of the original creators of Lightroom. He asked me what I thought of his product and, being a devoted Photoshop user I said 'Lightroom is a product looking for a purpose'. Famous last words.... boy was I wrong!

Photoshop allows you to do a great number of adjustments to a single picture, whereas Lightroom allows you to batch organize, process and catalogue many pictures all at the same time. Photographers use lightroom for its 'workflow' characterstics. Lightroom allows you to work with all image file types (RAW, jpeg, tiff, whatever) effortlessly in the same manner.

When Lightroom first came out it had a different processing engine than Photoshop, but as of a few years later Photoshop replaced its processing engine with Lightroom's. (If you work in RAW images in PS you'll see exactly the same processing interface that is used in Lightroom).

I use both Lightroom and Photoshop together, which is the way Adobe designed the products. The argument that one program is better than another is a bit pointless, as the two products are designed to work together for different purposes.

I import photos in Lightroom and do tagging, sorting and such. Then I'll go through the best images and apply generic adjustments (exposure, contrast, color, lens profile corrections and such). The cool thing about working with RAW images in Lighroom is that when you make adjustments, nothing happens to the original picture. Lighroom creates a parallel .xmp file that is actually a recipe of the adjustments made to the picture. And you can apply that 'recipe' to as many pictures as you like. No more having to go through every image individually. To be fair, you can also do the same thing in PS if you use Bridge and the Adobe Camera Raw engine, but the process is a lot easier and intuitive in Lightroom.

What Lightroom doesn't have is layers. (this pertains to the 'masking' you refer to). The only time I really use layers in my photography is when i take pictures of people and really want to do lots of cosmetic enhancements (eyes, skin, teeth and so on). More typically, if I have a series of pictures that I want to turn into a panorama I tell Lightroom to edit the images in PS. I create the panorama in PS then readjust the image in lightroom. The same is true for HDR type images. I'll highlight each of the images in lightroom, export to PS, create the HDR image then adjust the finished HDR in Lightroom. This may sound complicated but its actually quite easy.

Criticizing lightroom for not having masking is valid only from a PS workflow perspective (masking refers to applying a layer mask to block out or show parts of a layer in order to make selective adjustments in parts of pictures). Lightroom has a number of brush tools in its processing engine that allow you to brush in masks to reveal or hide the same type of adjustments. For example, if I want to make a portion of an image darker I can brush in the adjustment into the picture, or alternatively just use a gradient adjustment if the area is large. I can also brush out dust spots and particles. Each version adds a bit more flexibility to this process, the latest version (LR5) promises even more. (I have to check that out).

One thing I really like in Photoshop CS6 is the 'context aware' fill. You simply draw a selection around the area you want to eliminate or change (like an offending branch or other object) and PS will fill in the area with an intelligent fill based upon the surrounding area. Its a bit like magic I can basically do the same thing with Lightroom using its version of the clone stamp, but the 'context aware' function in PS is just too much fun to pass up.

Adobe has changed the way it sells Photoshop this past month. With the newest version of PS you can't actually 'buy' the product anymore, you have to pay a monthly subscription. It's $20 a month for educators and students, for everyone else its quite a bit more (it adds up for sure). The most recent Lightroom is still being sold as a stand-alone product so you don't have to pay subscription fees. I'm likely going to upgrade my Lightroom to version 5 this summer, but keep my current Photoshop CS6 for as long as I can.

Probably more than you want to know about Lightroom for sure!

Dan

[GearHead]

I use both Photoshop and Lightroom for editing landscape (topside) and studio photography. I started with PS back at version 4. Now that I have spent enough time with LR to be familiar with the way it works, I only send an image to PS if it needs extensive editing that LR can't handle. The newer versions of both support an easy round trip from LR to PS and back again.

I've also found some good plug-ins that work with both. Originally developed by Nik Software, and now owned by Google, the Viveza, Color Efex Pro, Sharpener Pro and others make operations that used to require masking far easier than traditional methods. They operate in PS as smart layers, and thus preserve the non-destructive editing workflow.

[scubajen]

Dan, Thanks for all your feedback. I appreciate you taking the time to provide more detail. I still think what others told me is what you are saying -- that for batch work, Lightroom is your pal. For individual work, it's Photoshop. And they are to be used in tandem. Which means I need to get Photoshop.

I have learned quite a bit via this conversation - and matching this conversation to my real-world observations. Thanks folks!

[cardiver]

Is Photoshop CS6 really 600.00?
Any less expensive versions on there?

[dphershman]

Is Photoshop CS6 really 600.00?
Any less expensive versions on there?

Adobe has changed its pricing scheme with the newest version of Photoshop (now Called Photoshop CC for 'creative cloud') Its a lot more complicated now.

It used to be you bought a copy of photoshop that you could use on two computers for $600 or more (as a teacher I've been able to get it at a lower price). Once you owned a copy you could upgrade each year for about half the list price.

Now you're required to buy a subscription with a monthly fee. Adobe's website has a new-user subscription rate for Photoshop CC listed for $20.00 a month for one year. (I assume that means that the price is liable to change after the year.) So, $240 a year now instead of $300 isn't bad, assuming that you dutifully upgraded each year.

I must admit that I feel better with 'owning' my own copy. So I'll keep my CS6 version for awhile until Adobe stops supporting it. Each time you buy a new camera you have to be sure to get updated RAW converters. When Adobe stops supporting old software there isn't any choice but to get the newer versions of their software just so you have the new RAW converters. So, if you were to find an older version of the software that someone might be willing to sell you it might not actually work with your camera. You can check adobe.com to see a list of cameras that each version supports.

I've working with PS for over ten years now, its grown into a huge program that interconnects with all their other software products (I specifically use Lightroom, Photoshop and Premiere both at home and work). Since the image processing engine in PS was replaced by the one developed in Lightroom a couple of versions ago I never use PS in my workflow except for a few types of projects that still require it (panoramas, special plugins and layer blending modes). Even though I teach Photoshop to student photographers I always recommend looking at Lightroom, then using PS if its absolutely required.

[nwscubamom]

So does Photoshop Elements still exist? I have found that to be WAY more than adequate for my photoshopping needs. And it used to be priced under $100. But I'm still on version 6. I had upgraded, hated it, and went back to 6.
- Janna

[60south]

Is Photoshop CS6 really 600.00? Any less expensive versions on there?

You can sign up for a class and get the student discount, it may be worth it even if you don't attend class. The whole CC business is really putting me off... I like owning my own copy too, plus I often use software where there's no (or a slow) Internet connection.

Each time you buy a new camera you have to be sure to get updated RAW converters. When Adobe stops supporting old software there isn't any choice but to get the newer versions of their software just so you have the new RAW converters.

I just ran into this with my new camera: LR and PS won't read the new Nikon NEF (RAW) files, whereas they did before. Grrr. The work-around is to download Adobe Camera Raw and convert your Raw files into Adobe DNG format, which LR and Photoshop can both read. Of course, this means you'll be managing not only your RAW files (and perhaps JPEGs), but also the converted DNG files as well.

...I'm not very happy with Adobe right now... :angry:

AFAIK, Elements is still available as a stand-alone product. IrfanView is also available, and it's free.