Ask Joe & Larry

My underwater shots never look good... How do you get a good Underwater Photo?

Larry: Easy, Get close, shoot up, use an external flash. Lesson over...

Well, maybe it needs a little more explaining.. So let's dig in and see what you can do to get some better underwater shots. My first thing I told you to do is Get Close.

Getting close requires several factors. First you must be a good enough diver to slowly move in on the subject without scaring it away. Start out shooting something like a coral head, or maybe a Sea Fan, or a Conch Shell. These are all pretty hard to scare away! The problem most divers complain about is that their pictures are all dull and look all blue. And they tell me they want to buy an external flash so they can get more colors. Now an external flash is very useful for underwater photos... but I'm sorry to say, it does not give you what you think. We'll discuss External Strobes a bit later but let's stop a moment and think about what we are doing with an underwater shot.

Keep in mind that if the airport has 200 foot of visibility, the plane will not take off to take you on your dive trip. But if you have 200 foot of underwater visibility, you are diving in pristine waters! The ocean looks blue because water - even when very clear - absorbs and filters out the red side of the color spectrum. So naturally our pictures will all look blue. Unless... we get close.

The picture of the barracuda to the right is a classic - bad shot. We see the all too familiar blue everything. And this shot was taken with an external flash! The problem is - the photographer is too far away. The farthest a flash will penetrate is about 3 - 4 feet. So getting close is more important that how much flash you have.

The basic rule of thumb that I go with is If you can't touch it.. don't shoot it! Now maybe you shouldn't touch a barracuda anyway, but you get the idea.

The other thing we told you to do is shoot up. Now really, you can shoot up, or across.. but never try to shoot down. And this is a very common mistake.

Let's take a look at a couple of turtle pictures. The first one has at least two of the most common problems.. too far away, and shooting down. That's why although it might make for a nice memory for you, it is not really going to impress too many of your friends. We are so far away from the subject, we are getting very little color... and this is even at night! It is normally easier to get color on night shots since you don't have all the ambient blue light around you.

(Note: The great turtle shot is one of many great photos taken by one of our forum members Aussie - bet you can't guess where he's from! Join our forum and check out all his photo's here: Aussie's Photo Gallery.

But if you compare it to the second turtle shot, you will see how much better the second picture is. That is because we have taken care of our two most important rules. We are close enough so the flash is lighting up our subject nicely. This gives us the color on the shell, and lights up our subject compared to the background.

The other thing that is happening for us, is we are not shooting down on the second shot. We are shooting across. Keep in mind that most all of the creatures have eyes on the side of their head, and shooting down at them, you loose their personality... The eyes have it! Would you take a picture of your friend from the top of their head?? Now if shooting a picture of Joe, that would be a good idea... but I digress... Speaking of Joe... We haven't heard from you Joe.. would you like to add some input?

Joe: I have to listen to you babble all day long... could you get to the point and sell them something so I can put it in a box?!

Larry: Subtleness always was your strength... Please allow me to go on..

The other reason we want to shoot up or across is so our subject can stand out better from the background. You'll see some more examples later on that will help show the difference. So we now understand the importance of shooting close and across. But that does not guarantee a good shot. Let's look at an eel shot that is shot across and close - but ends up being a terrible shot!

Note: To see this shot in full resolution straight from the camera, click HERE. It is about a 720K jpg file - so it might take a bit to download depending on your speed..

Here we are too close... Not actually too close for the shot... too close for the camera lens. So actually to capture this shot correctly, you need a closeup lens. (Are you happy now Joe?!). Let's look at almost the exact same shot except with two major differences. The second eel shot is done while using a camera that has built in close up capability, like the DX1G you can see that the face of the eel is in perfect focus. The auto focus on the better UW cameras has come a long way in a few years.

The other big difference you notice, is on the bad eel shot, it looks like there are a million bubbles all around. These are not bubbles. It's a phenomenon known as backscatter. Really a misnomer, since it is in the foreground, not the background! What it is is tiny little particles, maybe bits of sand, or other floating debris, that is right in front of the lens. When the flash on the camera goes off, the flash is so close to the lens (just an inch away) that any little particles floating right in front of the lens get lit up big time! And since they are too close to be in focus - they look like big round bubbles.

If you notice, in the good eel shot - the shadow from the eel is showing up on the sand below him and to picture right, while on the other shot, you can see that the nose of the eel is lite up straight on. The better shot is done with an external strobe. The strobe not only gives us much better color, since the light is coming down from above left, it doesn't illuminate all the scatter in the water - and believe me.. there was a bunch! This was taken on a wavy day at Sting Ray City in Grand Cayman, and the sting rays were flapping all around me trying to get some squid I had to lure the eel out of his liar. They were stirring up all kinds of sand, but as you can see, with the external strobe, there is hardly a particle to be seen!

I'll leave you with a few other shots where everything came together. The Mandrin fish was shot close and across - and gave us great color and a beautiful shot.

Film vs. Digital

I'm going to take a moment to talk about film vs. digital. I just love shooting digital. I've shot with everything from high dollar Nikonos systems, to the cheapest disposables, and a slew of digital cameras. Today, the inexpensive 6 megapixel cameras give me plenty of resolution for emailing, web paging, or even printing to 8x10 prints or larger. The other thing digital does is save me a ton of money!

On a week long dive trip, we'll get in a solid 4-5 dives per day, and if I'm shooting film, that is 25 rolls of film per week! By the time I buy the film and pay for developing, I've gone through about $20 per roll - so that's a film cost of $500 a week to shoot film! It doesn't take long to justify the cost of the digital camera when you look at the savings there!

Perhaps more importantly though, is I get better shots. If you shoot a shot with a film camera, you probably won't see the end result for a week. While when you shoot digital, you can see the shot a second later! You know if you just got the fishes tail instead of his head, or if you buddy was blowing bubble that obscured their face while looking at a little crab. And you can just shoot again! Then back in the room, or on the live aboard boat, you can hook the camera up to the TV and really critique your shots, and delete the bad ones!

We rent digital and film cameras, and I see an interesting trend. If someone rents the film camera, when they bring it back, the shots all look about the same... If they are new to UW photography, normally pretty bad. When, however, they rent the digitals, they bring them in so we can take the card and burn their pictures onto a CD for them. And the results are amazing. In the first day of shooting, pretty much bad shots... but you can see them getting better and better as the trip went on - because they could see their mistakes and correct them!

On thought for you, is if shooting digital.. plan on going through a set of AA batteries on each dive. A strobe will normally get about 2 dives before the cycle time slows down to the point of irratitation. The cheapest way to use that many batteries is rechargables. We have 4 heavy duty Ni-MH 1800mAh batteries with the charger in a Rechargable Kit for $29.95 - or you can get just the Batteries for $14.99. Whether shooting film or digital... batteries will make your life easier and stop you from missing that great shot due to dead battereis!

So remember, it really doesn't matter that much which camera you use. Sea & Sea has some good offerings or SeaLife has some nice packages. But no matter which camera you use, digital or film... just remember - get close, shoot up, and use an external strobe to kill the backscatter, and you'll be taking great shots in no time!

If you got some good shots, or want to check out some other peoples pictures, check out the site ScubaToys Photo Gallery. If you got some good ones, please post them!