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Lighting for Underwater Photography Lighting Techniques Underwater Photography Combining Strobe and Ambient lighting The most challenging shots to light properly underwater are those that balance strobe and ambient light. Here you use strobe light to restore colors and ambient light to record the background. This type of image is best characterized by the close focus, wide angle (CFWA) shot. To shoot CFWA, you use a wide-angle lens (28mm or wider). With the wide-angle lens you can focus closely on the foreground subject and still show an expanse of background which is usually water, kelp, wreck, or reef. The foreground is lit by strobe and the background is lit by the sun or ambient light. The challenge is in balancing the two light sources so the image appears to be lit entirely by the sun. You have a great deal of control over how your images look when you can adjust strobe and ambient exposures independently. You can darken or lighten the background by changing the shutter speed or f-stop while keeping the foreground exposure unchanged. Conversely, you can alter the foreground exposure by changing exposure compensation or the ISO, while keeping the background unchanged. By using different settings, you can produce a variety of exposure and choose which one you prefer. The CFWA exposure balancing technique is best done by using TTL flash, then adjusting the exposure compensation or the ISO. To correctly light CFWA images, you must be able to control the strobe and ambient exposures independently. This is done using the camera in Manual mode and you change the exposure compensation or ISO, it affects only the strobe output. If you compensate by -1, or increase ISO by +1 stop, the TTL function will put out one f-stop less light than it thinks it needs for a proper exposure. The ambient exposure would not change because it is controlled by shutter speed and aperture to give the correct exposure. If a camera is set in auto exposure mode, both strobe and ambient exposure will change when exposure compensation or ISO is change.

Contributed by Mike Chua on July 18, 2008, at 12:22 PM UTC.

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This intel was contributed by Mike Chua Mike Chua

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