Many Questions

[JKPAO]

Sorry forgot about the CAMERA TAKING? Because bouyancy is KEY with pictures! (NO MOTION) along with other physical factors. Taking a camera with you is adding a task, it can overload a person that is working on their bouyancy (concepts) skills. Who knows you may have walked away from some excellent instruction, that has you helicopter finning after your class! The only thing is be honest with yourself first. Can you handle the tasks with a limited and measured saftey factor or an envirormental issue like hitting something you should not! (coral ,fish turtles insert your fave here) I know if you don't have a camera you can't take pics! Good luck.
See you topside! John

 

[paddler3d]

Furthering you SCUBA education and diving knowledge is never a bad thing.

 

[Crush]

Hi,

Welcome!

I posted a few pics I took at http://www.scubaboard.com/forums/underwater-photography/316215-fuzzy-pics-me-camera.html with a Canon SD1100 digital camera in a Canon WP-DC22 waterproof case. The photos are not perfect, but in my opinion they are better than nothing. The compact size of the unit and absence of external strobes makes for worse pictures, but also for less hassle.

 

[rob@diveinutila.com]

UW Cameras with as little dive experience as you have is simple. Keep it Simple, don't go overboard. You can get great results of at least a semi-professional quality with a simple compact digital and a housing. A pocket compact digital Canon or Olympus and a housing from Ikelite will probably do you fine.

Our divemasters get much better pictures with these things than our customers get with cameras that are covered in strobes, housing expensive SLR digitals, costing $1000s!

It all comes down to practice - if you take 100 pictures without care and attention on the surface you'll probably get one or two that are OK. Use the same strategy UW and you'll get nothing. Read up on UW photography, start with a cheap camera and housing, take a course in buoyancy techniques and UW photography. Get an instructor who really is an UW photographer (ask to see their portfolio first).

You'll be surprised what you can achieve with the simplest of gear. 99.5% of all the pictures taken on our dive center website have been taken with simple pocket compact digitals in cheap housings. Take a look to see what can be achieved.

Remember it is rarely the equipment that delivers poor pictures - it is the photographer.

Some simple rules to follow that can help:
1) Have great buoyancy technique so you are not having to think about this while taking pictures. If necessary take the PPB Specialty or have an instructor take you on a buoyancy exercises dive. It will also keep you from damaging the reef while taking pictures.

2) Get close. Remember how quickly you start to loose light and color through water. Also this will reduce the number of particles in the water helping you to get better pictures. The poorer the vis the closer you need to be. One rule of thumb can be if your fishy subject is not filling the frame you are too far away.

3) Don't take pictures of fish running away, don't take pictures from above. Tails and heads are boring! Try to get eye contact of your subject. I have spent the whole dive waiting to take one picture.

4) Try to use the reflected light coming from the surface, so taking pictures with the camera angled upwards often works well.

5) Practice with your white balance and macro settings!

6) Take a course!

Good luck with it all!

 

[redacted]

Nitrox??

If you find you have to manage your NDLs during your dives, then Nitrox may be useful if you want to extend your bottom times. But if you are managing your gas supply rather than your NDL, then Nitrox will offer you very little advantage.

 

[hudson]

I'll break rank here (well except with awap ) and say Nitrox will mostly likely be worthless for you.

For 1-2 tank dives/day, an AL80 (which is typically what you'll have available, although even an HP 100 or AL100 won't change the equation much) and no pony tank, and even with a good 0.5 cuft/min SAC...

...you'll be limited by available gas and not by air NDLs assuming you allocate a conservative rock-bottom reserve (which you should)

Nitrox is good regardless if you are diving 4 times a day (which you are not) or are using even larger tanks, but your profile it's of little benefit.

 

[medic5]

Thanks for the suggestions. I have e-mailed the operator in Aruba as they claim to offer a photography course and I will see what type of program and camera they use. If that works out then I would prefer to focus my energy on doing 5-10 dives in Aruba to prepare me for the trip to French Polynesia. During my last set of dive I was quite proud of my buoyancy control, but who know if that will last?

Thanks again.

 

[JKPAO]

The gas itself maybe of little use now, But the know why is good too!
See you topside! John

 

[TSandM]

You have gotten some great advice here, and I'll summarize it briefly:

Nitrox offers its greatest advantages in the middle recreational range, for dives between 70 and 110 feet, where NDLs begin to limit things. It offers very little benefit in shallow dives, and becomes less useful as the dives deepen, because the percentage of O2 you can use decreases. It is also very useful if you are doing repetitive dives, where residual nitrogen begins to limit your NDL time even on shallower dives. It has little impact on bottom times for people who can't approach their NDLs on a single tank because of gas consumption. There is anecdotal evidence that diving Nitrox makes you feel better, but the one study that looked at this didn't bear that out. It has not been shown that Nitrox reduces DCS risk in recreational divers (probably because DCS risk is already so low, and because people diving Nitrox tend to use all the extra bottom time they get by doing so).

Regarding the camera, what everyone has said about making sure your buoyancy control is very good BEFORE carrying one is spot on. But it is quite reasonable to begin with a digital P&S, without strobes. You'll take a lot of bad pictures while you are learning to use it, but with digital cameras, that's okay! My friend NW Grateful Diver dove for a couple of years with a P&S and got some stunning photos -- and threw away a lot of others. Eventually, if you find you really enjoy taking pictures, you'll want to add strobes and/or upgrade the camera, but you have time to make those decisions.

 

[tarponchik]

1) If you are prone to motion sickness, consider not only shore diving, but also Nekton type of liveaboards that are very stable and you will be unlikely to be sick. Also, some destinations have really short boat trips, no more than 5-10 min (e.g., Dominica/Soufriere)
2) In general, if you would like to dive more, always pick up a place with shore diving available. For example, if you go to Roatan, pick one from Fantasy Island and Coco View pair, if you go to Utila, this would be Deep Blue Resort or Laguna Beach, etc.
3) For pictures, start with a simple Canon point-and shoot with a water-proof case. I suggest Canon because they have cases for almost every camera they have. There was a discussion on 1st time cameras here http://www.scubaboard.com/forums/un...304789-can-you-suggest-first-dive-camera.html my comment is #13 on page 2.
4) Get a light and go for night diving. Better lights are with LEDs cause you will save tons of weight on batteries. Do not go for extra-powerful projector types; better get two small lights and keep one in your pocket as a back up.