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A Few Good Tips for Great Underwater Pics
08/24/2008 - By Staff Writer Most beginning photographers are shocked when they get their first batch of underwater photos developed (or uploaded) and witness how different things look compared to real life. Here are a few tips on how to make your pictures as nice as your dive!
Most beginning photographers are shocked when they get their first batch of underwater photos developed (or uploaded) and witness how different things look compared to real life. With their eyes, they saw vibrant colors and delicate, multi-patterned hues. In the photos, everything is a dull grey-green-blue. What happened?
Water happened, that’s what.
Water is a thousand times denser than air and this profoundly affects how light moves through the medium. As you descend, water becomes darker, and the blue of the water filters out the bright colors of the corals, tropical fish, and other underwater life. The reds, oranges, and yellows that can stand out so brilliantly in properly lit underwater photography actually serve to camouflage sea life under natural conditions. The deeper you go, the “bluer” it gets.
Water is transparent at least, right? So it should be easy to take pictures in. Wrong. The thing is, there’s more in ocean water than water—billions of tiny particles are suspended in between you and your subject. Zillions of additional particles litter the ocean floor, just waiting for you to touch one toe down and stir them up. This disturbance of particles is called “backscatter.” To avoid backscatter, you’ll want to control your buoyancy. This might require a lot of calm, patience, and practice! Plan to spend a great deal of time simply drifting motionless while you observe the conditions around you. Approach your subject as you face the current for camera-ready conditions.
You’ll also want to avoid using a built-in flash—the closer your flash is to the camera lens, the more it will illuminate any particles in front of the lens, obscuring your subject. Using an external flash accessory is the way to correct light conditions and enhance color, even in deep, dark waters. Even with the best flash accessory, however, you’ll want to stay within a couple of meters (six feet) of your subject. If you are taking pictures at a shallow depth without a flash, check to see if your camera has an underwater color correction feature, which will automatically enhance color lost to the darkness of water.
Your shooting distance should equal roughly ten percent of your total visibility. So if your visibility is ten meters (thirty feet), then try to take pictures no more than one meter (three feet) away from your subject.
It can be difficult to estimate shooting distance underwater, as objects appear 33% closer and bigger than they would in air making it easy to underestimate your difference.
Here are a few other quick tips to get your started:
• If you are using natural lighting, shoot up when the sun is out and at a depth no greater than fifty feet
• Stabilize yourself: you moving + subject moving = too much variability
• Control your depth of field to get the shot you want
• Frame the subject to give it perspective. A canyon, sides of a wreck, big rocks work for frames. Look for color contrasts
• Take the picture against an uncluttered backdrop
• Use a wide angle lens to get the shot you want from a closer distance
• For an easy, pretty shot, try to capture a silhouette of sea life against a backdrop of a bright water surface
• Keep everything—camera, accessories, equipment--connected to you!
Happy diving!