Archive for June, 2009

By Colin Gans

If you’ve thought about making rather than taking underwater photos, then wresting control of your camera’s settings is the first step towards your newfound creativity. This means not using auto mode; and as far as lighting goes, using one or more external strobes to allow for artificial light to be aimed more precisely rather than relying on your camera’s internal flash which has been designed primarily for convenience and general topside use.

Consider the following regarding artificial underwater lighting:

• In lighting a subject well, the illumination of particulate in the water (backscatter) is an underwater photographer’s number one enemy. The underwater photographer needs to use quite a different approach to that when lighting scenes topside.
• When positioned correctly, one or more external strobes can overcome the effects of backscatter. The correct positioning of strobes is important and should vary with the focal length of the lens you’re using according to distance to subject. Shooting wide angle underwater requires a different strobe position than when shooting macro.
• Compact video lights or dive torches do not work well for still photography as they are simply not bright enough to yield the levels of light produced by a strobe. An external strobe allows for a better quality of light to be concentrated for very a small time; perhaps 1/10,000 of a second per exposure.

Check out the rest of Colins interesting article in Dive New Zealand : dive-articles.

I will be updating the Dive Resources section with some good tips and tricks for Digital Underwater Photography and some great places to look at enhancing or adding to your equipment.