I was wondering if any of you Canon 20D shooters had any favorite settings to suggest for me. I will be freediving and shooting wide angle shots of other freedivers in California. I am using a 10-22 wide angle lens on my 20D in an Ike housing. I will be using a Sea&Sea YS90 digital strobe. I am familiar with the strobe and feel confident in making the right manual settings. It's the camera that intimidates me at this point.

My previous camera was an Olympus C-3030 with the same YS 90 strobe and a wide angle port-lens. On that system, I usually selected by aperture of 4.6 or shutter speed of 120 (I think) to avoid blur.

As this new Canon camera is an entirely new beast, I am sure I'll be learning much by trial and error. I don't have a very long history with photography and have so much to learn The new system hasn't been in the water yet but soon....very soon!

Thanks, Joe

Shouldn't need to change your shooting habits too much Joe. You may want to select a slightly smaller aperture (say F8) to improve sharpness/DOF, but not if your shutter speed is going to be too slow.
Most users just set the camera in manual mode and then meter off the blue midtones in the water to get a background exposure, then set the flash accordingly.

Good advice so far. You'll be close to the surface, so you can and should try to use f5.6 or f8 if you can. Set your camera in manual mode SS = 1/90 and f8. Go on down and look through the viefinder at the little bar on the bottom - it's the meter. It is a little sliding scale, and it will be to the right or the left if you are under or overexposed. When it's in the middle, the camera likes that setting. Try taking shots and see what you get.

Alternatively, you can use Av aka Aperture priority mode. This will select the shutter speed for you, since only the aperture effects the flash exposure, Av won't effect your strobe settings.

Good luck
James

Thanks James and Anthony. I'll start out at f5.6 to f8 in the manual setting and keep an eye on shutter speed to make sure I don't get motion blur. I'll remember to make use of the light meter in the view finder which is a feature not available in my last camera.

Joe Tobin

Good luck Joe and look forward to seeing your results! :-)