New to UW Photography - lens advice

[Diving Dane]

Hi Guys,

I´ve been reading along on this forum for some time, and appreciating the knowledge shared here, but this is my very first own post

Right to the matter at hand, having been diving for some time, I´ve now just begun to do some UW photography - started on a vacation in Cozumel this summer, but have continued to do it right at home in Copenhagen Denmark as well.

The gear I´ve bought, and started out with, is an Olympus Tough TG-3, and a PT-056 housing.

I´d like to expand a bit now, specifically into trying photographing with a red filter, and also the fish eye lens shots I see all around look really good, so I´d like to try that out as well.

However, being completely new to this, it all seems like quite a jungle out there, and I´d like to make sure that I buy something which is actually compatible with my camera and house

My questions are these:

• Would anyone be able to point in the right direction with respect to lenses and red filters which are compatible with my equipment (and does it just need to be 52 mm?)?
• My next vacation will be a liveaboard on the Maldives, would you think that red filter and fish eye is the way to go (back home it is more a macro thing and the water is very green, but that´s a different ball game)?
• Would you normally use a red filter and fish eye lens together, or are they exclusive?

As you can see from my questions I am really new to this, so any advice will be greatly appreciated

Thanks for reading, have a great day

/Diving Dane

 

[EskilJ]

I'd recommend you to call Lars at Fotografit.dk, He gives good support, he is the first choice for under water photography in Denmark.
The red filter is only for blue water. In our green waters you should theoretically use a purple filter. But it will eat some light also, of which we don-t have too much. Light is a better idea for macro, and up here in general.

 

[Storker]

Would you normally use a red filter and fish eye lens together, or are they exclusive?

Considering that a fisheye lens has an angle of view of 180 degrees (diagonally), it's pretty darned difficult to mount a filter in front of it without some very noticeable vignetting.

There are some SLR FEs that can take filters, but they are mounted either at the rear of the lens between the lens and the body, or in a slot filter holder inside the lens.

 

[Diving Dane]

I'd recommend you to call Lars at Fotografit.dk,...

Did exactly that, and he guided precisely the right way. Looking forward to receiving my new lens!

Thanks to both you Guys for replying.

 

[Steve A]

Please post the results, I am a beginner and just bought this camera today so any advice would be greatly appreciated

 

[diverjen]

Also considering this camera, so please let me know what you got and how well you like it!

 

[EskilJ]

RAW format capability is a really important feature in under water cameras.
Under water, the white balance and lighting is often quite bad in the "straight from the camera" jpg's, so they typically need much deeper editing than land pictures.
You can change lighting much more in RAW, without degrading the picture quality.

This tough-camera doesn't have raw.

Cameras like Canon S120 do. (And many others)

 

[Steve A]

That's probably ok for me as I have yet to edit anything. I just like to look at the pics as they come out and hope there are a few good ones lol! I don't wish to spend my time editing and 'fixing' photo's as my spare time is short so I will leave it to the proffesionals.

 

[John Gulliver]

That's probably ok for me as I have yet to edit anything. I just like to look at the pics as they come out and hope there are a few good ones lol! I don't wish to spend my time editing and 'fixing' photo's as my spare time is short so I will leave it to the proffesionals.

Once you get the hang of it, image editing doesn't take longer than a minute or two per shot. It enables you to rescue images that are mediocre at best or even so poor straight from the camera that you would otherwise delete them. With a decent image editing programme, you will be amazed at the results. It really is worthwhile making the effort and spending a little time on this.

 

[Storker]

Once you get the hang of it, image editing doesn't take longer than a minute or two per shot.

Especially if you're using Adobe Lightroom or a similar type of program (I believe Apple has something with the same type of functionality).

With Lightroom, raw file processing can be as easy as importing the files to your harddisk and into LR. Or it can be as extensive as you want it to be; the only place where you need something more than LR is if you're going to do heavy retouch. That requires a pixel-level editing program like PS or PSE. As a bonus, you get quite decent image cataloging abilities as well.

Adobe markets Lightroom as "by photographers, for photographers", and I believe that slogan. I've been using it since v.2, it's now v.5.x. You can download a trial version (fully functional for 30 days) to try it out.