Underwater Photography

[SeanKP]

Hi guys

I posted some shots in the gallery from my recent trip to the Red Sea and Robski requested that I post to the forum explaining how they were taken so, here goes.

Obviously, the photos were taken whilst scuba diving. Reasonable results can be obtained whilst snorkelling but I find it much harder to get a decent composition from above than in amongst the action.

I used my 350D with a 28mm Sigma f1.8 in a special underwater housing made by a Belgian company. The housing allows you to control virtually all of the camera's functions whilst underwater. The front of the housing contains a port with a perspex front through which the lens points.

Housings for digital SLRs tend to be expensive (more costly than the camera) but there are housings for many of the point and shoot cameras out there at very reasonable prices.

As sunlight moves through water the light is filtered out so, obviously it gets darker the deeper you go. Additionally the various colours are filtered at different rates. Red is the first to be lost, then green and finally blue. This means that, with no additional help, pictures taken below a metre or so will look blueish.

Many (most?) underwater photographers use a strobe (a waterproof flashgun) to bring back the colours but I discovered shortly before the trip that mine wasn't working and so all of my shots were taken with available light. This meant that all my shots had a horrible blue hue to them. However all was not lost. I shoot in RAW format and am able to adjust the white balance of the picture afterwards using Photoshop. Using this technique I am able to fully restore colour to pictures taken at less than about 12 metres deep and I don't have to worry about backscatter which are unsightly white marks caused by the light from a strobe bouncing off particles in the water.

Fish tend to move a lot more slowly than birds (my other photographic obsession) and using the 28mm lens as opposed to a 500mm, camera shake is much less of an issue. Underwater though, it is even more important to get as close to your subject as possible. You need to minimise the amount of light-filtering, particulate-filled water between your camera and the subject as far as possible. This can be tricky as fish, like birds, tend to have a zone of comfort which they don't like being invaded, especially by bubble blowing, clumsy oafs that we divers must appear to be.

I have tended to shoot at ISO 200 on shutter priority with the speed set to 1/100 sec but am planning on experimenting with fully manual next chance I get.

Well, that's probably a lot more than you all needed or wanted to know and so I'll end it there but, if anyone has any questions, feel free to ask.

Sean

[robski]

Sean

Many thanks for taking the time to write this up. It sure gives us an insight into underwater photography.

[Saphire]

Yes Thank you Sean for your explanation on how its done and the equipment you used. I would think it to be very tiring to use a camera underwater especially a large one such as a DSLR.

[ollieholmes]

Sean,
Thank you for that. Now i understand things a bit better i may have a crack at it someday.

[rogerscoth]

Thankyou for that interesting insight Sean. I love to see underwater photos, it really is a different world down there. Alas, I will not be able to give it a go - I cannot swim! (together with the problem of my CFS/ME) - very frustrating.
Roger

[ollieholmes]

We all seem to have varied interests of photography subjects, and different levels of experiance suject so i think it would be quiet interesting for us to pool together and write a guide to photography of different subjects, different modes etc.
Im confident taking photos of aeroplanes but i would love to know more about getting good macro photography or people photography. And there may be others out there that would be interested in learning how we manage to shoot our aeroplanes. Maybe we should add another section for this to the forum.
How do others feel about this idea?

[robski]

The very point I was making in Stephens thread. It would help broaden the forum and add more interest. Most people will find something useful to say if they get the ideal chance.

[ollieholmes]

Originally Posted by robski

The very point I was making in Stephens thread. It would help broaden the forum and add more interest. Most people will find something useful to say if they get the ideal chance.

Well we have a start here, now we need more. I will write something up about aviation photography tomorrow.
Mods,
Is there any chance of having another section created for these threads? This way we can all benefit from each others experiance. In the long run it may get more of us interested in more areas of photography and that cant be a bad thing.

[Tanny]

Thanks for the info Sean, I only wish I was familiar with photography to be able to explain my picture taking. I used to take pictures underwater with a simple shutter camera sealed inside a cover. My area was around an island where I worked off the north west coast of Australia. I used only a snorkle and would hang onto a chunk of coral and take pictures one handed. You can emagine the condition of the pictures, but amazingly I did manage to get a couple of reasonable pictures for proof of my exploits.

[Dr.Manjeet Singh]

Originally Posted by ollieholmes

We all seem to have varied interests of photography subjects, and different levels of experiance suject so i think it would be quiet interesting for us to pool together and write a guide to photography of different subjects, different modes etc.
Im confident taking photos of aeroplanes but i would love to know more about getting good macro photography or people photography. And there may be others out there that would be interested in learning how we manage to shoot our aeroplanes. Maybe we should add another section for this to the forum.
How do others feel about this idea?

You hit the nail on the head or hit this Singh on the head-i for one would love to read all your different ways of taking shots.Thats the best idea since thisWPF was started.Regards and hope others feel the same way.It would be a great help to beginers like ME.