Couple of questions about Fuji F31 & ISO

[Kirstie]

I currently have my camera on the underwater setting (although I have a feeling this is more useful in clear blue foreign water than it is here). In this setting, the ISO is automatically set by the camera.

My questions are, might I just as well take the camera off the underwater setting in the UK and, if so, what ISO should I go for? The range available is 100 to 3200. At the moment, I only use the internal flash, although I do have a separate Fuji flash arm that I could use if I could be arsed to drag it along on each dive.

Thank you, people.

[triplefin]

Kirstie I dont know a lot about these as I've only just got one as a back up camera and been playing around with it, but as i understand it the underwater setting is really designed for blue water and not the green stuff we have here.
As far as the ISO setting goes when you set it manually, try and go for the highest one you can get away with 400+ and you start getting a lot of noise (grainy effect) in your pics. I try for 200 or less. Yes, dig out the strobe. It will widen the type of shots you can successfully take as it will reduce the amount of backscatter once you practise a bit and get used where best to place it.
Happy snapping

[Kirstie]

Thanks for that, Jane. I'll set it on 200 and see how I get on. If I don't use the strobe, should I go for 400 instead?

[Cussy]

Kirstie,
If you are shooting macro and relying on flash, do as Jane says and keep the ISO low. For wide-angle you might not get away with ISO of 200, so 400+ for natural light work. Some people report that these Fuji's are good at higher ISO, but still try and get away with as low as you can.
HTH,
Rob

Edit: On my Olympus I used to shoot 200 for macro and 400 for wide-angle. IMHO there are too many variables to think about to keep changing ISO as well

[David P]

First, recognise that my photography is almost always available light - where my standard fudge is to set the camera to "M" and ISO to "Auto-400" (plus manual white balance) - which means it'll use ISO 100 if it can, but roam up to ISO 400 when it needs to. But after some tests today (in my usual 5-10m freediving range! - I'll try to post some tomorrow if I can - bit knackered tonight) ISO 400 can look pretty noisy, particularly if it's at all under-exposed and you're doing much post-processing. So my next tests will be on ISO200 I suspect

With flash - yeah, fix the ISO on 200 max. The Fujis have a habit (if left to themselves) of setting ISO 800 with flash...

I'm still getting the hang of the wide-angle lens. Today's trick was getting a tiny scrap of vignetting in one corner 'cos the "lens hood" thing had twisted a bit. I also did some quick checks on zooming with the lens which seems quite happy at least up to half-way (my video will only zoom half way before it loses focus).

[ChristianG]

Originally Posted by triplefin

Yes, dig out the strobe. It will widen the type of shots you can successfully take as it will reduce the amount of backscatter once you practise a bit and get used where best to place it.
Happy snapping

That's good advice Kirstie.

As for where to place the strobe, have a look at my avatar and you'll see that the twin strobes on my camera system of that time are extreme left shoulder and extreme right shoulder.

Now that suits for those strobes which are extremely powerful indeed, and it suits for those strobe arms which are pretty long. The arm on your system is unlikely to be that extreme and your strobe is unlikely to be that powerful, thus you should still go for extreme left shoulder for wide angle since the strobe is going to be correspondingly closer to your camera anyway. Extreme left gives you the greatest angle away from the lens for backscatter.

Close up/macro is a different matter entirely. As a first measure, articulate the arm so that the strobe is immediately above the lens and as far forward as possible without encroaching into what the lens can see. The strobe should be pointed at the average focus point of the lens.

On my experience these are often the optimal strobe placements for both types of photography. As always, if you think you're close enough - you're not. Get closer, then get closer still.

The late, great, Robert Capa (born in Budapest, Austria-Hungary as Endre Friedmann which is a story in itself) <http://www.photo-seminars.com/Fame/capa.htm> had a famous saying "if your photographs aren't good enough, you're not close enough". He was talking about above water photography where it's nowhere near as critical.

[turbanator]

Originally Posted by David P

I'm still getting the hang of the wide-angle lens. Today's trick was getting a tiny scrap of vignetting in one corner 'cos the "lens hood" thing had twisted a bit.

Kirstie had that and it was really noticable on the above water shots, but went (I shall look again) on the below water shots for the same 'session'.

r
P

[Kirstie]

Thank you for all the good advice, everyone. I'll try to put it into practice on tomorrow night's dive.

[David P]

I said I'd post a couple of (available light) pix at 400 ISO where I found the noise quite disappointing. The second one's got the vignetting I spoke of, top left.





Originals (zoom in to see what I mean) are at Picasa Web Albums - David P - Misc

[Cussy]

David - Thanks for sharing those. I notice the second was taken at a 1/400th, so a slower shutter speed and higher f number might have helped (although you then might get blurring), but on the first image you don't have so much latitude. What does "lightly optimised" mean? Sharpening of images can often make the noise appear worse. What I tend to do is remove the noise first then sharpen. If the red spectrum was seriously lacking, which in natural light photography it always will be less than say 5m, then a readjustment of red will result in a lot of noise. Manual WB is just doing this for you, so the noise is most likely coming from the incomplete light spectrum. Natural light is definitely a time when capture in RAW is an advantage. You better hope those clever Russian's do a Fuji hack, just like those pesky Canon owners have

There are plenty of programmes that can deal with this sort of noise, Noise Ninja for instance. Your images just go to show we are at the absolute limits of what these remarkable little cameras can do. They aren't designed for underwater.
Rob