I'm not a quitter, but...

[hammerhead man]

Scubapatton, my mistake I forgot to add the www to the address. It sould read The Underwater Photographer, Underwater Digital Photography Classes: Improve your underwater photos. Email me if you have any questions at jamescrew6@verizon.net

Regards,

Bill

 

[scubapatton]

Thanks!

Hopefully the OP (David) finds value in this as well..

 

[scubaguy655]

I think everyone goes through a learning curve with photography...underwater or otherwise. I am still new to the underwater side and I have been shooting digital for 3 years and film for 4 years prior to that. I still have days where I can't seem to buy a decent shot!

I recently added a 2nd strobe to my rig and took it on the 1st two dives. After looking at the pics I was disgusted because they were all garbage. As such, I didn't take the 2nd strobe for the next 4 days of diving. On the 6th day I told myself that I had spent all that money on the 2nd strobe and I was going to give it one more chance. I got some of the best shots ever. It was just a matter of thinking about the issue and working around it....in my case it was strobe positioning.

As to the focus issue, I am not familiar with the 350 ( I am still an Oly 5050 guy) but I have found that I have to slow down when taking pics of moving targets to help the camera focus on the target.

...and shoot till your finger bleeds!

 

[Dannybot]

Davil: I have an Olympus fe-230, which has the hsame underwater settings, and I encountered some of the same problems. I experimented with the settings, and got better. This is what i learned:

1) underwater 1: When you go through this setting, or use this setting, it will automatically set for macro. If you want anything beyond a few inches, you must manually turn the macro off. This could be the most of your problem if using this setting.

2) Underwater 2: The default is no flash, you must turn the flash on on this setting, no macro.

3) Underwater 3: Macro, fill flash.

I normally use UW 2, and set the macro and flash.

Remember to check your macro and flash settings. I had better results using the internal flash on auto for all shots, but with an external flash, you may do better with the fill, which fires on every shot. For the upclose, macro shots, you are moving in three dimensions, which no matter how good of experienced land photographer you are, it is near imposible to compensate for this. Get on your knees if you can for these shots, but that is rarely possible on a reef.

But remember, you'll waist a lot of shots, but that is the joy of a digital. Good luck.

 

[pakman]

Davil, stick with it... Yes it can be frustrating and I have had days with my first P&S where I had plenty of shots like your first two!! As others said, get familiar with your camera's settings in manual. If the SP-350 has any shutter or focus lag, get used to it so that you can anticipate your shots. Make sure you get that AF lock.

On the froggie shots, it looks like you moved on the second shot. Something that hasn't been mentioned is how is your buoyancy skills? I can't tell from your profile what your experience level is. But it can make a world of difference if you're able to keep that camera in a very still position instead of bouncing up and down. One of the side benefits of taking up u/w photography is that it's probably helped my buoyancy far more than my technical diving courses... Try taking a shot hovering inches over a bed of sea urchins

 

[vkalia]

"Also remember the rule of Underwater photography, If you shoot 100 shots and get ten good ones you are doing very well!"

What kind of rule is that???!!! That sounds like a rule for re.... Did you just make that one up?

Well, if that is the case, then I'm definitely a retard. I get 10% keepers in my land photography, where I make a reasonably tidy income from stock & direct image sales. Underwater, it is closer to 5%.

Vandit

 

[BurBunny]

Sometimes, even now, I have dives where nothing seems to "click" photographically (pardon the pun). I can't get anything the way I want it. Usually, I just fold down my strobes, turn off the camera, and enjoy the dive. Other days, it seems that my camera is connected to my brain and I'm getting everything I want, or close to it. (But of course, that limits my camera's ability to my brain power, which is always suspect ) We all have good days and bad days. But the bad days will lessen as you get to know your camera better and are more comfortable with it. Each new element can add a learning curve, so be patient.

Vandit - would love to learn more about the stock image sales. Do you do any images u/w for stock purposes?

 

[TheDavil]

Thanks for all the advice and encouragement, everyone. Obviously, my biggest issue is practice, practice, practice. Luckily I have a pool in the backyard and a diveable lake 45 minutes away.

Looking back on my dives, I think my biggest problem is forgetting to change from my macro mode to normal for a lot of these shots. I get all excited when I see a shark or something and just point the camera at it and press the button.

I think that I also put to much faith in Inon's "sTTL" settings. Most of the advice that I've gotten is to set the camera's flash setting to slave and fine-tune with the strobe's manual settings. I realize now that adding the strobe made the whole rig less "point and shoot" than it was before. I should've realized that, but I really wanted my shots to just suddenly get better simply because I bolted on a strobe. Duh. I can be a moron sometimes. I appreciate that y'all pointed that out gently.

My buoyancy is good. I can blame surge and current on a couple of the shots, but I think the macro issue is the culprit for the a bulk of the focus issues.

I'll keep at it and keep asking questions. You folks are amazing - I got a ton of great info. My original post was mostly a product of emotion. Your replies have given me a basis for looking at the issues logically and calmly, realizing that I really don't want to take a sledgehammer to my camera. At least right now.

Tim - yep, that was Miss Piggy at MOC. What a great dive that was.

David - I posted a short reply in the Hawaii Ohana forum under my "anybody up for a dive" thread from a couple weeks ago with the dive ops I used and what I thought. I'll PM you with more info, too.

Tim (Wolverine) - thanks for going above and beyond on answering ignorant questions.

I'd also like to thank the Academy for this award...oh, wait, wrong speech...

Thanks again everybody,

David

 

[vkalia]

Sometimes, even now, I have dives where nothing seems to "click" photographically (pardon the pun). I can't get anything the way I want it. Usually, I just fold down my strobes, turn off the camera, and enjoy the dive.

I am completely unable to do that when I have a camera. Despite my best efforts, I am able to dive solely for photography far less often than I would care to, and consequently, when I do, I need to find something to shoot.

The hardest part for me with photography has always been getting away from the "obvious" shots and going for the truly creative, unique images. A lack of any kind of creative training in my background contributes to that. So if I try to avoid the obvious shots, I end up with a blank.

My solution is to apply a great tip by Freeman Patterson in one of his books - find one patch and shoot it. Any patch (throw a hoop at random, for example, and use the area within the hoop as the patch) and take 20 or 30 or whatever different photos of whatever you find in it. This forces one to think differently. I apply a variant of that to underwater work. Usually, my trick in such cases is to find something - anything - and spend the whole dive shooting it, experimenting with angles, lighting, etc.

To the OP, I would recommend a variant of that - go into a pool, take something negatively buoyant to the bottom and spend a whole dive shooting it. Keep notes about what you are doing and relate that to your results. That will help you nail the focusing/exposure very quickly.

Vandit - would love to learn more about the stock image sales. Do you do any images u/w for stock purposes?

To be honest, I dont have any of my UW images in stock - my file simply isnt large enough (and after a HD crash earlier this year where I lose 3 months worth of images, it is even smaller) and so I am not marketing what photos I have, except as a bundle with magazine articles. I'd rather lose some sales now, rather than have a potential buyer contact me and be unable to meet his requests.

In my neck of the woods, there are probably 2-3 people doing underwater photography, so getting it placed wont be a problem, I think. Given the ever-declining returns from my land-based stock images, especially in this market, I am not too fussed about even placing it - the only reason I'd do so would be for some exposure to the buyer's market.

Placing with a Getty or Corbis would be more financially profitable, but as UW photography is rarely location-specific, you will need a really outstanding set of images or a very large collection of species portraits to get in with one of the big boys. And shooting expressly for stock sales is the surest way to kill one's interest in photography & creativity, IMO.

If you are just looking for some side money, Alamy or a similar newer agency would be a good bet. They went through a phase of indiscriminate portfolio-adding (esp in Nature/Wildlife/Landscape) but seemed to have tightened up now, or so I am told. They could be a good bet.

Vandit

 

[Scubakevdm]

If you do decide to throw in the towel, can I have your strobe?