Reply To: Bobtail at night

[Nicolas]

First and foremost it’s the subject being quite reflective. Some subjects are really hard not to ‘burn’. If you watch our August webinar on blackwater photography by Anthony Berberian, he explained that his #1 challenge is to avoid over-exposing the eyes of the juveniles and larvae he shoots at night.

There’s a couple of ways to go about minimising that issue:

1/ First, use your camera as its best ISO value (ISO 64 / 100 or 200, depending on the camera): you maximise the dynamic range of the sensor, meaning there’s more chance you can recover the highlight in post-processing (have you tried?).

2/ Second, see if you could reduce your strobe power, but not to an extent that some of the bobtail isn’t getting properly lit (we want colours everywhere).