Aquamutt:
Could you tell me what equipment you use and pass along any tips for this newbie? Thanks!
Hey Aquamutt -
To echo Verona, one of the keys is getting close to your subject. Most of the shots I posted were taken from between 1 and 4 feet from the subject.
Your pics at Stingray City look good - probably partially becasue they were shallow, and you got a lot of ambient light from the sun. The deeper you get, the more difficult it is to get light on the subject from the sun, and the "thickness" of water between the sun and the subject filters our more of the low frequency light (Red, Orange, Yellow, etc....). Having a flash close to the subject replaces the sunlight, and has a much thinner "filter" since you are close to the subject.
White balance is the hardest part of this. If your camera will support RAW format, use it, and go download RawShooter (
www.pixmantic.com). It's a free program for color correcitng RAWs, and it has some great tools for getting white balance right. Basically, you can pick a part of the photo and tell RawShooter to color correct so the thing you chose is "neutral gray." I'll usually color correct based on getting light grey sand, and then fine tune it by eye. You can do the same thing in Photoshop (using Adjust Levels and the eyedropper tools) but it's less intuitive (IMHO).
If you want to get into an inexpensive external flash, you can do so for about $200 with the Sunpak G-Flash, as long as you can shoot your camera in manual exposure mode (I use G-Flash, an S-70 in manual, and a Ultralight Control System tray and arm). The basic G-Flash comes with a handle bracket, but if you really want to control your light, you'll want a better way to move the strobe head around based on the subject. Here is a thread about the Sunpak G-Flash, including a picture of SeaYoda's DIY rig, and my considerably more costly but basically the same result ULCS rig (SeaYoda is a much better fabricator than I am).
http://www.scubaboard.com/showthread.php?t=128360
Good luck!
Riot