17 replies to this topic

[Chin Siang]

Need help. After my death of Sony DSC P1, I just bought Olympus C 4040 with PT 010.

Normally for day dive shoots, what setting do you set for your digi camera?

For night dive, without strobe, what setting do you set for your digi camera?

Thanks.

[MikeO]

Howdy,

For macro and closeup shots, set the camera on manual mode, then select a large aperture value (like f8.0 or f.11) and a fast shutter speed (at least 1/100). Then let the internal flash make up the difference. You may have to play a bit with the camera to learn the setting that works best for you. For wide angle shots during the day, try to use settings that give you a good enough shutter speed to stop the motion. If you use P or A mode for wide angle, make sure you turn the flash off if you don't have a foreground to light -- the flash setting will affect the shutter speed setting in these modes.

Mike

[kdietz]

go to www.jaytreat.com for some great advise on using your c4040

Karl

[NLAVD]

Thanks Karl. As a fair warning to anyone, my site on the subject is still in developement so some of the info is pretty thin. I have a page on the basic menu selections that I normally use and I'm in the process of getting strobe settings for macro, WA, etc. added. Check back soon.

Click here for my site.

-Jay

[herbko]

Forgot to login before my last reply.

Herb

[NLAVD]

Thanks Herb. I've explored only a few of these settings to any extent. I do have a comment in reply to some of yours.

Macro focus:
The camera should focus out to about 36" in macro mode. Nearly all of my shots are within this range. The only exception is with a silhouette or an ambient light photo of something like a whale shark...i.e. not very often.

AEL button (auto exposure lock):
This is just preference. I'm moving more and more to manual but my use of it for blue backgrounds has worked out well and removes one source of error. It's also pretty convenient.

Camera-Multi Metering:
I've been meaning to experiment with this one. "On the list".

Picture-WB:
Funny, I had thought of this but wasn't confident that I was right. Cloudy skies do produce light that is filtered through water...hmmm?

Picture-Sharpness: -5. That's the recommended setting for someone who intends to sharpen the image afterwards.

I'd like to know where this came from. I truly don't know what this setting does to the data but I have a hard time believing that having the camera undo somethig only to have Paintshop Pro redo it later is good. It may be a case of having PSP do it instead of the camera, I don't know. let me know if you have a reference for this suggestion.

Contrast falls under the same as above. I'd like to know more.

[herbko]

Sharpness: The manual recommends -5 for images to be sharpen later on a PC.
I don't think the camera will fuzz up the images, it just does not sharpen when
you have it set this way. I use unsharp mask on GIMP to sharpen.
Seems to work well.

Contrast: Here I'm not so sure the recommended -5 is the best setting.
I almost always want as much contrast as possible without clipping. Since the output
is limited to 8 bits/color and the CCD is probably a little better than that, it may be best
to let the camera stretch the image intensity range over the entire output range.

Herb

[laz217]

Originally posted by Herb

Camera-Multi Metering: I use spot metering; Just choose a spot in the background that I think should have the "correct" exposure and use that as a starting point.

Hmm.. Question for you, Herb.

If you're shooting in full manual mode and with strobes, what purpose does spot metering accomplish? Is this something you're only using when metering for a silo (ambient light) shot?

[herbko]

I meter the background for the WA shots, usually the brightest area in the blue water.
On shots including the sun, that's usually off the scale, in this case, I set the camera for the highest shutter speed and smallest aperture.

Herb

[laz217]

Ah, okay. That's the same thing I do except in the case of a WA shot with some type of silo in it. In such case, I meter right next to the subject.

I too usually have to use such a high shutter speed and small aperture in order to expose any photograph with the sun in it--quite different from film. I wonder why this is the case? I assume it's because the CCD is a lot more sensitive to light than film. Anyone know the reasons why?

[herbko]

Did it again. Forgot to login.

Herb

[laz217]

Thanks again for the insight, Herb.

[laz217]

Herb,

In regards to your comment on setting the Picture Contrast to -5 (or LOW on the 3040), are you noticing that the higher contrast is allowing your images to display a broader dynamic range?

I know that a RAW image before any post-processing is done to it contains 10-12 bits per sensel, but once this is converted to JPEG or TIFF it is resampled to 8 bits--thus some information on the shadows and highlights is lost.

I'm trying to make sense of what would be the optimal setting. Should it be set at 0 (NORMAL on the 3040) or at its highest setting 5 (HIGH on the 3040)? My concern with setting it at its highest would be the chances of blowing out the highlights.

Considering that I rather err on the side of making the photograph come out underexposed, which with a curve/level adjustment could bring out the detail. This seems like a more logical choice rather than blowing out the highlights, which is 'close to impossible' to correct. (But my logic has been wrong many times before)

If you figure something out I'd be interested in your results. I will test it as well and post mine.

Jay, considering the superior control of image sharpening available in Photoshop, most digital photographers prefer to shut off any in-camera sharpening. Also, most Photoshop users involved in printing will leave the sharpening of an image as the last step before printing--even after resampling the image. One of the best results will come from converting your image to LAB and applying the unsharp mask to the Lightness channel.

[laz217]

Okay, I couldn't wait. Based on my results of shooting two photographs under the same conditions with my Oly 3040--except for chosing the two extreme levels of contrast for each image. My conclusion is as follows:

The low contrast photograph displays less shadow details but also less blown out highlights in comparison with the high contrast photograph.

The high contrast photograph shows more detail in the shadow but it also was extremely prone to chromatic abbrevations, noise, and blown highlights. So much so, that it is VERY easy to distinguish between photographs and enough to make me a firm believer in setting the contrast to the lowest setting possible.

A simple adjustment of the curves/levels in Photoshop brought out a lot more detail in the low contrast photograph without the large amount of noise and chromatic abbrevations that the high contrast photograph showed.

Let me know how your results turn out.

[herbko]

Laz. Don't you sleep?

Your question got me going on a test that I had planned, but had kept putting off.

The test is to shoot a subject with a very limited brightness range under different exposure conditions and contrast settings,
and then another subject with a wide brightness range also using a range of exposure and contrast settings. After looking through all these shots, and also studying their brightness distributions with the level tool, I tend to agree with your conclusion. The lowest contrast setting is best. There's possibly a small advantage to using a higher contrast if your entire photo has a very uniform brightness, but not worth adding varying contrast to the long list of things to keep track of while shooting underwater.

I'll keep my contrast setting at -5.

Herb

[NLAVD]

Ok, most of that makes sense. I made them mistake of thinking that "0" meant "0"...silly me. If I understand it right, with the camera's sharpness (for example) set to zero, it still does some processing of the data and -5 is just less processing. If that's the case then I can certainly understand why you might want to do it later.

As far as pixel "blow-out", aka digital saturation, aka clipping, here's a good example:


My answer to this particular image however, would be to simply use a faster shutter speed. This would make the lower left part of the image a much deeper blue, it would get rid of the saturated patch at the top, and would have no effect on the lighting of the crinoid.

I agree that lowering the contrast could also get rid of the saturation but why do you think it would be a better solution?

[herbko]

Your analysis of this photo is correct. A highter shutter speed would have been better. The contrast setting only has a small effect compare to the exposure. A contrast setting of -5 vs 0 would only have made a small difference compare to an increase in shutter speed.

I only saw a small difference between a contrast setting of 0 vs -5 in my test shots.
For a shot including the sun, which will certaintly span more than the available dynamic range, there is no reason to have the camera further stretch the intensity distribution which is what increasing contrast basically does.

In summary, setting the contrast to -5 would have helped, but not nearly as mush as a higher shutter speed.

Herb

[NLAVD]

Thanks, I think I'm getting it. Can't learn too much ya' know I'll be experimenting with these settings asap.