Cephalopods of Anilao

kelpdiver wrote:

did you attempt to correct for WB yet? The blue ring shots are more yellow than I would expect - unsure if this is WB issue, or the flash. I would have expected TTL to deliver closer to correct, though my experience with it is nil. Always to manual.

Now that you mention it, it does look a bit odd, but it seems that those are the actual colors that were present. I'm shooting raw with camera white balance set to 'underwater auto', and unless strobe illumination is marginal (large subject, shooting from too far away), I don't touch white balance when processing in Capture One. However, in this specific case, the guide was using a small white ziptie as a pointer for situations where a metal stick would've been too crude, and I got it in one of the shots together with the octopus - and doing spot white balance off that ziptie barely changes the palette; if anything, the yellow tinge gets more pronounced. I'm guessing the yellowish brown sand caused the octopus to match its color as camouflage.

F8 seems too open - the strobes can handle the illumination aspect, and give less exposure to the background. On the 4/3rds, I'll sit at F14, at max sync speed.

I was under the impression that on APS-C 24mp, apertures past f/8 start exhibiting diffraction softness. Past f/13, I see the pictures visibly darkening - the ST-100s really don't have that much power, at least in TTL mode. I can shoot f/22, but only with the strobes inches away from the subject. This should change when I get the Retra Pros.