Underwater Photography

[roverthtaeh]

Having recently achieved Scuba certification I have just purchased a Canon camera with underwater housing and embarked on an underwater photography learning curve.
Just wondered if anyone shares the same interest or has any tips?
Best effort to date:

[RED-DOG]

Thats a great effort rover.

[Sheriff Fatman]

Had a few attempts at this myself.

Biggest problem is lack of light and everything will become more 'blue' as you go deeper.  I use a Canon digital with a standard flash in a housing and struggle to get decent colours in pictures at any sort of depth.

Best tip is to try and shoot pointing upto the surface so as to maximise the light, and to get a close as possible to the subject.  Even a couple of feet will make a difference to the colours you see.

The beauty of digital cameras is that you can take plenty of shots in the hope that you'll get a few decent ones.  The good ones are well worth the effort.

I'll post a few of my more successful attempts on here for reference.

[Sheriff Fatman]

My all-time favourite (and I've posted it on here before).  This is from a shark-feeding dive in the Bahamas.  I took loads of shots and this one just came out perfect as it swam past me.

This is at about 55 feet depth so the colours are already disappearing.

[Sheriff Fatman]

Another one from the same dive, but a 'distance shot'.  Even at a distance of 'only' 8ft or so away there's a huge reduction in clarity and definition with my camera due to the flash.

[Sheriff Fatman]

This one is from Cuba in 2003.  The Moray Eels are hard to photograph as they like dark places and you tend to not want to get too close to them.  This is as good as I've managed to take of them.

[Sheriff Fatman]

Same dive.  This is unusual as the Moray's don't tend to swim out of their holes, but these have become used to the divers and swim out to be fed by them.  They were 'tame' enough to be handled by the dive leaders but being eyeballed by them is still pretty unnerving.

[Sheriff Fatman]

This is from a wreck dive I did in Cuba and is the deepest dive I've done.  The bottom of the wreck was at about 35m so this is probably taken at around 30m.  As you can see the colours really suffer badly at this depth but the wrecks tend to give good definition so you can still get some interesting pictures.

[Colchester Kev]

cracking pics, that shark one should be published I reckon.

[Rookie (Rodney)]

cracking pics, that shark one should be published I reckon.

[Sheriff Fatman]

A good example here of the problem with light underwater.  2 pictures taken within seconds of each other of the same school of fish.  The first one is from above and a few feet away, the second from below and 'up close'.

The second picture is about as 'colourful' as I've managed to take underwater and it's not a patch on Rover's effort in terms of showing the colours you actually see.

One day, I'd love to invest in a decent underwater camera (or at least get a handheld flash attached to a digital) to try and get some better shots.  It's hard to do justice to what you actually see in most cases.

First pic:

[Sheriff Fatman]

2nd effort:

[Sheriff Fatman]

A 'still life' effort.  Lack of colour is an issue so I try and shoot towards the surface and so as to try and get the 'shapes'.  I quite like this one (i.e. it's less crap than the other efforts!)

[Sheriff Fatman]

Last one (honest!)  Not one of mine but a photo taken of one of the scariest monsters of the deep.  There's also a shark in the picture if you look closely.

This is another pic from the shark dive and it shows the camera I used to take the earlier pictures.  Bog standard Canon digital with an underwater housing around it.  The camera is 5 or so years old now so probably obsolete by today's standards.

[Colchester Kev]

Your eyes give away the fact that you were shitting yourself there ... no shame in that under the circumstances mind