First Underwater pictures

[Jschmees]

Thanks Alcina and everyone that gave me advice...these are some of my results when I snorkeled in Hawaii and I think alot of them turned out very well. Though when I tried adjusting images of bigger sea creatures like turtles and sharks the images just turned red in color and unclear.. I was hoping maybe someone could help me or give me some advice on how to make certain pictures look clearer and better or what i could do next time. Oops by the way I use photoshop 5.5 to edit my pictures. If I left anything out let me know. It seems to not let me upload my pictures but when i get the chance ill upload the red splotchy pictures.Thanks again for the great help!

-Josh Schmees
-canon a80, wp-dc 900

 

[Jschmees]

Here's an example...let me know your advice...thanks

 

[Grajan]

Can you upload the original file? Needs the 'before and after' to add any value.

Here's an example...let me know your advice...thanks

 

[Jschmees]

Oops I guess that would help...

 

[ssra30]

I think the biggest problem you have is that you were too far away from the subject.
When taking a picture of something that big, don't use any zoom and get closer. Ideally you should try to get withint 2-3 ft of something that size (I know, easier said than done).
Did you use auto level function in photoshop? That only works once in awhile for underwater pictures. The turtle picture is too dark and viz was not very good so I think it would be hard to do much with it.

 

[WetImage]

it would help if there was a little more contrast in the image....

I know the lighting was horrible

this was about the best I was going to be able to get it

 

[Grajan]

Tough one,

The lack of light and distance has produced a few issues that are hard to overcome, there is a lot of CCD noise and there is no red information at all.

In these circumstances you cannot force a 'perfect' result you just have to make subtle changes to wring the most out of the image. Wetimage did as well as anything I tried.

Questions:

What was the ambient light?
What was the camera setting? It looks like you were in manual with way too fast a shutter speed (1/500 sec). This is much faster than needed and will result in low depth of field and an unsaturated image once the aperture hits the stops (as it did).

I would stick to some form of auto until you are more experienced.

Hope this helps - over to the experts....

 

[Jschmees]

My settings for the shot were Manual mode, ISO 50, F5.6, 1/500, internal flash, daylight mode. If I shouldn't use this what do you recommend I use insteaad?

 

[alcina]

Hey! Nice shots in your gallery Looks like you had a great time and are getting the hang of the camera pretty quickly!

It's hard to get shots that are taken from far away to look great - but you can make them a little more pleasing by messing with them in your software. Have a look at levels and curves and play around to see what happens. You can use the clone tool to zap bits of backscatter.

Also, take the time to look through your images from time to time, especially before you are about to get in the water again. Look at the image and the EXIF data and try to picture in your mind what you could do to make it even better next time. I use this method a lot and it really helps me prepare to capture a shot once I am underwater.

Great job!!

 

[Grajan]

My settings for the shot were Manual mode, ISO 50, F5.6, 1/500, internal flash, daylight mode. If I shouldn't use this what do you recommend I use instead?

Ouch,
Your closeup stuff looks great but you are constraining the camera to a combination that will only work in very proscribed circumstances. I am too lazy to learn enough to to get that right each time so I use the following combination (as learned from other SB members):

Program mode (semi auto)
ISO - 100
Color balance - cloudy
Flash (with diffuser) closer than 6ft otherwise flash off
Macro as needed

This is for a Canon S45 with internal flash so the options should be similar.

This is not perfect every time but it pretty much always gets you close enough to easily fix it in PhotoShop.

Some of my shots are here - you can see the parameters on the more recent ones but I let the camera work them out. It is WAY smarter than I am.....