My camera club roped me into giving a presentation on UW photography

Please register or login

Welcome to ScubaBoard, the world's largest scuba diving community. Registration is not required to read the forums, but we encourage you to join. Joining has its benefits and enables you to participate in the discussions.

Benefits of registering include

  • Ability to post and comment on topics and discussions.
  • A Free photo gallery to share your dive photos with the world.
  • You can make this box go away

Joining is quick and easy. Log in or Register now!

fairybasslet

Contributor
Messages
10,038
Reaction score
171
Location
Stuck in the middle with you
# of dives
200 - 499
Oy. :11:

I've been trying to come up with some things to say and sure could use some help. This is what I came up with so far:

1) You are in a "hostile" environment, in that besides trying to get the photo, you have to worry about your air supply, your no-deco limits, your buoyancy so you don't destroy the reef. You also have to worry about not getting lost.

2) Reds disappear in the first 15 feet (is that right?) of water so you have to compensate with manual white balance or strobes.

3) Things seem closer and larger than they really are making it sometimes difficult to aim your strobe (it will be a miracle if I can ever learn how to do that).

4) The damn fish move so if you have a camera with shutter lag, you get a lot of fish butt shots. (I can demonstrate a lot of those :rofl3:)

5) Once the guide points something out, good luck getting a shot before every scares it away.

I figure I'd demonstrate the above points (I have photos of everything, including a traffic jam on the reef in Thailand and my inept ability to aim a strobe).

Any other ideas? Thanks guys.
 
Ellen,

1. You could also talk about o-rings, o-ring maintenance, floods, flood insurance.
2. Point and shoot vs. DSLR
3. Advantages of RAW and manual control of shuter speed & aperture.
4. Aiming of strobes to eliminate/reduce backscatter.
5. Digital vs. film

HTH,
Dave
 
maybe added to #1 - should not touch/move/harass any sea life in order to get a shot

also to point out really (apart from if diving on a wrecks) you do not know what you will actually see on a dive, and when you do see things it may only be briefly or in a less than ideal position. This makes it incredibly difficult to "plan" shots in comparison to more static topside ones - probably more like topside wildlife ones...so all your camera settings, lighting, composition etc. etc. often have to come together very quickly
 
wow Fairy... you can give hubby some tips next month as he going to get roped into a camera talk also (he did a rebreather talk on wednesday and foolishly mentioned his cameras)

photo buddies and etiquette... having to share the same creature to take pics off (ive always wondered if one photog gets peeved at another for taking too long)

dealing with differnent types of visability and having other divers stir up the vis ect

and someone already mentioned the caring of your camera rig (o rings ect)


have fun!!
 
2) Reds disappear in the first 15 feet (is that right?) of water so you have to compensate with manual white balance or strobes.
This is right but you can do better. ALL colours disappear beginning at the red end of the spectrum. So red goes first, then orange, then yellow etc etc, the deeper you go. It's a shrinking/disappearing rainbow. :wink:
 
In addition to what already has been mentioned, I worked on the following as well:

Trim / weight distribution wih camera/tray/strobe
Plan for getting in and out of water with camera, boat v shore, etc.
Way to attach camera to me in case I needed 2 hands for something unexpected
Regarding situational awareness, it is easy to get distracted with a camera in hand
Finding a buddy with same photog interests
A way to secure equipment in a carry on, Pelican cases are dead giveaway at airports
A camera kit and what should be included in it
Utilizing ambient light to its fullest advantage
Main lenses and their uses
Macro and its challenges
And for film camera, what to expect ratio-wise of pictures you would share, at least for the first 100 rolls :D
 
Hi Fairy,
Everything mentioned so far is useful information, but I think probably more suited to a UW photography presentation to a dive club, not to a camera club!

From your original post, I assume that your audience are experienced (or at the very least enthusiastic) above ground photographers, and not necessarily divers.

Some additional comparisons that you could make between above ground and underwater photography could be:
1. Light, light and more light. Water density increases the effects of distance greatly. Eg, in a lot of cases moving a strobe only centimeters (or inches, in the US) can easily effect exposure by +/- a full stop.
2. Definitely back scatter
3. Cost. In most cases with big rigs, the camera body is one of the cheapest outlays!
4. Ports; flat vs dome and chromatic abrasion at wide angles with a flat port
5. Different types of housing and how the controls work
 
I think Mark is on the right track. I would focus more on the differences between shooting out of the water versus in the water. How light behaves differently in water than on land (eg. water is a differential filter of light, the highest filtration with the longer wavelengths and lesser with the shorter wavelengths) and how you deal with these differences. Backscatter akin to red-eye in dryland photography, etc. How a housing works to protect the camera from water and how you go about changing the settings while in the housing. If you can relate your talk to concepts that photographers already understand, it makes for a more interesting presentation.
 
Don't forget the underwater environment. Where else do you have the opportunity to directly interact with wildlife up close and personal. It's like being on a photo safari and having that once in a lifetime opportunity to take a picture of a tiger in the wild, or walking through a rainforest and having endless small creatures to ID and photograph. The challenges of being ready for the right type of picture, getting close enough, interacting without scaring off the subject (knowing their habits), using ambient light (similar to shooting indoors to candlelight). There are limitless interesting things you could discuss.
 
https://www.shearwater.com/products/swift/

Back
Top Bottom