Photos UW photos for May

Hi guys don't know if someone is already doing this or I will be the only one posting here, but lets give it a shot. I love to take pictures but I mainly take them under 10-30meters of water. Here are a few shots I took last weekend. If anyone else in this forum shoot under water show us




let me know what you think

 

Cool, with what camera do you take the pictures? Does a flash work under water or do you need constant lights?

 

@eldiablo Flash works underwater but it does scare away any marine life so constant light is always better, the deeper you go the brighter the light need to be so flash is unlikely to work well.

@Dr. Stranglove My camera can't go as deep as 10-30m but I'd be interested to know what camera you are using. Taking photos underwater is cool but because of the magnification of water I find it can be tricky at times!

 

I really like the vivd colors of #2. Cool shot!

 

I use an old Nikon 5200 with an underwater case see here.

I use the internal flash, which is pretty weak, but unfortunately I cannot afford a slave flash as these are rather expensive. This means that I'm only really able to take close up pictures where the flash can light up what ever I'm pointing the camera at. But then with the general viz in Scottish waters being no more than a few meters close ups are best anyway. Also because of the low viz (caused by lots of small particles in the water) if I use the internal flash over any distance I get a ton of backscatter. This is because of the angle of the light coming from the built in flash, with a slave flash (which is usually mounted on a flexible arm) you can change the angle of the light which reduces the backscatter.

@MrWillyWonka. tbh I have not really experienced that the flash scares the marine life, I think it's more me, a big 6foot+ thing that makes a lot of noise (bubbles). I have to disagree with you though, I have yet to see anyone taking UW pictures with constant light (as in with big flashlights).. simply because it does not provide enough light. To my knowledge there is really only two types of lighting, flash and ambient light (ambient is very difficult especially in the UK as there is little light at depth and hence the exposure times go up)

My camera is a bit slow at focusing (both in and above water) which unfortunately means that the fish often gets away while I'm still trying to focus

A big screen is nice to have for taking pictures under water (and I guess above), unfortunately my Nikon has the worlds smallest screen so sometimes I just point and pray that the fish is in the picture

Finally a very important bit with taking pictures under water is the way the camera handles red colors and general white balancing. Many camera's have manual white balancing options, so people bring a white piece of plastic with them to set the white balance at the depth they are taking pictures. Again my Nikon was clearly never meant to go under water as there is no option to set the white balance but all in all it handles the loss of red light much better than many UW compact cameras I have seen.

@MrWillyWonka, I have yet to have any problems with the air to water magnification, if anything it makes small critters easier to see

an example of backscatter (see all the white dots all over) and this is mild backscatter

This is an ambient light picture (one that went ok, not great but ok)


BTW all EXIF data is still with the images so you can just save the image and view the data, this will also point out the difference in exposure time between flash and ambient light pictures (ok I know it's not the same object but I did not have any of the same)

 

I remember looking at how much a waterproof case would be for my 10D once as I was keen to get involved in some surf photography but quickly changed my mind once I saw how much they were