USA (9 July 2004) -- Just a few days from now, I'm headed to the Caribbean for my first scuba trip in over a year. I'm looking forward to diving from a "live-aboard" ship anchored at a pristine site about 11 miles northeast of Cuba. Of course, I'll be bringing my digital camera. Underwater photography isn't just for the Cousteau family anymore. These days, it seems everyone is getting into the act of preserving underwater memories. Heck, even nondivers can take underwater pictures. All you need is a mask, fins, and snorkel to skin dive; underwater cameras work just as well on the surface or 5 feet under water as they do at a depth of 100 feet. Waterproof Camera Housings First things first: There's really no such thing as an underwater camera. All underwater cameras are simply ordinary cameras in watertight housings. You can find housings for most popular digital camera models. These housings are designed to keep water out, usually to a depth of as much as 150 feet, while still giving you access to the most important camera controls. Where can you find a housing for your camera? Start with the manufacturer. Canon, Olympus, and Sony, for instance, all sell housings for some of their cameras. What if you have a model that isn't compatible with the manufacturer's waterproof housings? Don't try doing it yourself by attempting to seal your camera in a plastic bag. When it leaks, your camera will "sleep with the fishes," as the wise guys say. Instead, turn to one of the following companies for a camera housing: Aquatica, Ikelite, Light and Motion, and Sea & Sea. But speaking of bags, there is one company that sells a housing that actually is, well, a sort of plastic bag for your camera. Check out EWA-marine for its innovative line of enclosures that are made from flexible, transparent PVC. They're essentially "bags" into which you insert your camera. You're not shooting through cloudy plastic, though: There's a glass lens port built in for high-quality photography. Various models are rated from snorkeling depth (up to 30 feet) to as much as 100 feet for scuba diving. Keep It Dry No matter what kind of housing you choose for your camera, it's critically important to keep the camera dry at all times. There's an old joke about a new diver who opens his camera housing in the middle of a dive to change rolls of film. Obviously, no rational person would do that, but a lot of people don't seem to mind splattering water onto the camera after the dive is over. Remember that even a little water--especially salt water--can kill a digital camera. Before your first trip to the beach, practice opening the waterproof housing in such a way that no water drips onto your camera. If you have a small can of compressed air (you can get one from any camera store), you can blast water away from the housing to dry it quickly. And make sure you are dry, so you don't drip water into the camera as you lean over it. It's a really good idea to put a huge media card in your camera (512MB or bigger) at the start of the day so there's no reason to open the housing halfway through the day to swap. Instead, only open it up at the end of the day, when everything has been dried off. Don't worry about turning the camera on and off--most housings let you access the camera's power. Feature: Take Great Underwater Pictures There are some experiences that words simply cannot adequately describe. Take, for instance, what happened when I went diving off the New Jersey coast a few years ago. "Watch out," the boat's dive master warned. "You may see a few jellyfish on this dive." In reality, I descended through hundreds, perhaps even thousands, of 5- or 6-foot-long jellies. They were everywhere as far as the eye could see. They moved through the water like a roaming herd of translucent buffalo. It was one of the most surprising, amazing experiences I ever had under water, and thankfully I had a camera with me to freeze the moment forever. | | Light & Motion Titan D100 Where'd the Color Go? The first time you take your digital camera under water, you might be disappointed by the lack of color. Everything comes out in shades of blue. Unfortunately, color is readily absorbed by water, and the deeper you go, the more pronounced this effect becomes. If you're shooting in very shallow water--say, while snorkeling or skin diving--then you won't notice much loss of color. But by the time you get past 10 or 15 feet of water, red is absorbed by the water since it has the longest wavelength. Your pictures start to take on the hue with the shortest wavelength: blue. One solution is to adjust the white balance of your camera. If your camera has white balance presets, choose "cloudy" or "shady." And when you have a choice of how to frame your picture, you should point the camera slightly upwards instead of downwards. Pointing it up increases the available light and reduces the amount of blue in the shot. For the best color reproduction under water, though, you'll want to use a flash. I See Spots! As soon as you start firing a flash under water, though, you get the bane of underwater photographers: backscatter. The problem is that water isn't as clear as air. It's filled with floating particulates. When you fire a flash, the light reflects off of all that dirt in the water and some of it invariably shows up in your pictures, looking kind of like snow. So how do you avoid backscatter? There are a few solutions. If all you have is the flash that is built into your digital camera, only use it to shoot subjects that are very close. The more distant your subject, the more likely that you'll get backscatter in your pictures. A more expensive alternative is to add an external underwater flash, usually called a strobe. A strobe, typically mounted at the end of a bendable arm, avoids backscatter by getting some distance from the lens so that the light doesn't reflect straight back at the camera. If you're looking for a strobe, I highly recommend starting at Sea and Sea. Getting the Best Shots Then there's the question of when you should take your camera under water. You probably know that I often say that the best hours to take pictures with your digital camera are in the morning and late afternoon, avoiding the directly overhead sun. Well, underwater photography requires exactly the opposite shooting strategy: You'll get your best shots when the underwater environment is at its brightest. That means, of course, the hours around noon. When you shoot with the sun overhead, it penetrates the most deeply under water, giving you the ability to shoot with faster shutter speeds and get better color in your pictures. Don't over-use the zoom while you're down there. Remember that water acts like a magnifying glass, and that means your camera's zoom will have even more reach than it does on the surface. Digital cameras tend to have rather limited wide-angle capabilities to begin with, so taking one under water further reduces the bottom end of the zoom range. That's why I rarely zoom in much with my digital camera under water; I find the wide-angle position captures the pictures I most want to see. SOURCE - PC World |
