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Underwater Photography Primer
Most of us have enough problems with land photos as it is. My advice to would-be u/w photographers is
this: Before you start trying to take photos underwater, make sure your buoyancy skills are near perfect.
I have seen many divers crashing into the reef, destroying corals and trying to take photos while flailing
around. Please become a good diver first before you start to compound the difficulty of your dives with
carrying a camera around and trying to take pictures while hovering motionless over a reef.
A good place to start would be by taking an introductory course such as the U/W photographer specialty
or even a full week course on a liveaboard with a pro like Jim Church.
See you all underwater.
-- Matthew Endo, July 22, 1998
As a novice diver I didn't find that staying alive (or even close to neutrally buoyant) was a big problem.
However, I found that getting more than a few acceptable pictures per roll was one. In my case, I think it
is because I was mostly trying to do wide-angle pics with a 15 lens on the Nikonos, and this is basically
manual (the ttl didn't seem to expose properly a non-centered background) fill-in with part of the backlit
(pictures taken looking down are usually less sucessful) subject at close-up distance. I am not sure this
would be that easy even on the surface. Besides you have to estimate distances modified by water, orient
the flash, and you can't pop out a flashmeter ! I am wondering if with a modern housed camera, af, and
auto fill-in it is not much easier.
-- Quang-Tuan Luong, September 7, 1998
Let me suggest that UW Photography requires such anal attention to equipment that a good idea is to
buy from someone who actually knows the equipment: ABSea Photo ocean@primenet.com Next to
LAX. This is not like getting an N90 w/ a 180mm and SB24.B&H will not help you here. I'm not an
owner nor related to him.
-- Douglas Cummings, November 9, 1998
I recently purchased a Minolta Vectis Zoom for kayaking. Sure it's a lot heavier than the disposables I've
been using - it doesn't float so I can't just toss it to a friend - but I took it for granted that some genuine
optics and a true zoom would improve my snapshots and maybe turn some into true photos. So far, I
think the disposables actually have a slight edge in picture quality!
-- Alon Coppens, November 20, 1998
A quick hint for setting up a Nikonos....mount the lens upside down....then rather than having to flip the
camera completely over to read the scale and set the distance you can just look down onto the top of the
lens and set it.....saves a couple of seconds and is alot less distracting to the u/w life than waving you
system around in front of them...tom
http://www.photo.net/underwater/primer (10 of 23)7/3/2005 2:18:13 AM