Mark, George and project scree.

[viktorlantos]

Thanks guys for the input. Really useful tips. This is a great thread

On lens i usually shoot with my 17-40 L one. Earlier used 50mm with my zoom lens but that was not good (lens was weak). Maybe a fix 50mm would be better, or just go for a lens what Mark likes? 135mm?

 

[zig]

I find the 500w strobes are quite powerful, I have 2 of them and struggle to shoot below f16/22 even at 50 ISO

Peter, can you control the output? or is that with the light's at full whack?

I find with the bowens lighting, you can control the light on a scale of 1-6...6 being the full 200w.

you can shoot both lights at half power(no.3) , f11 1/200s iso 50. for the creative side, just turn the output down to the lowest setting and you can go down to the f4's and such.

With flash, it's about experimenting... a lot of it. Now i've got to grips with the basics, I now know what could be possible with more lighting, time and space.... The futures bright

Thats usually at the lowest setting Mark, these are Bowens strobes so fully adjustable. You could use tracing paper over the bowl light reflector to lower the output and reduce your f number but this diffues the light, so I usually do without that and just go with the harder light. You could also as an alternative attach a softbox on the higher output strobes to reduce the f number this is really what they are designed for to still give useful f numbers for normal situations, but this still diffues the light. The larger softboxes usually have 2 difuser skins, an inner one and an outer one, you can remove the inner skin and this will give you harder light but you get fall off at the edges then. There are lots of variables really. some softboxes are also harder than others to begin with, the inner surface on some of them is more reflective. I have one softbox that I use quite a bit, I use it with no skins, it only comes with one anyway I use it with the 500w strobe, this is a small softbox about 60cm square with a highly reflective surface, that can be useful for some situations. I'd say the bowls I use are a lot larger than your ones as well so I probably get better spread, there is even a larger bowl attachment that I could use and this could be even better for more even spread on larger tanks, I must try that one sometime that could be another solution.

 

[LondonDragon]

Great work guys, we might all as well hang up our boots lol top notch scape, photography and video!!

 

[sanj]

maybe I'll knock a thread out with regards to lighting aquariums?....

yes please Mark.