Posted by Dick Analog on May 11, 2005 at 19:28:29:
In Reply to: Nice Color posted by Mojo Mike on May 11, 2005 at 15:15:26:
I forgot to mention one thing which seems to have had a positive effect on the color from my little camera (a Canon Powershot S410, with Canon UW housing by the way). The day that I got the external strobe I was having a heck of a time getting any kind of useful image out of the camera, so I experimented with just about every adjustable parameter that the camere has. One thing I discovered while blasting my cats with macro shots is the impact of effective 'film speed' on image quality. Many digital cameras, if they have any kind of 'manual mode', allow you to ajust the effective film speed - meaning ASA or ISO. If I set the camera to ISO 400, the images turned out very noisy (grainy) - just what you'd expect from a film camera. When I set the ISO to 50, the noise was almost non-existent and the color seemed much richer. So all the photos I took at Anacapa were with the camera set at ISO 50. I imagine the price you pay for a low effective film speed is either a slower shutter speed (more blurred fish tails) or shallower depth of field due to a wider aperture.