Nick (Limex),
yes, you can always change the "value" assigned to each of the 3 positions of the Gain switch on the camera by going into the Menu, select Gain setup, select the same gain switch that is currenclt "active" on your cam (e.g., L, M, or H) and assign a new value to it (e.g, 6dB, 12dB, etc.)
It doesn't take me more that 10 seconds to do that, literally.
It may help to "save" the Gain Setup command in the "personal menu" so it's very quick to access a any time.
Last thing, Nick, NEVER - EVER shoot with the autofocus on (particularly in green -murky waters like often here in CA), at least when you're shooting WA or Medium shots. You may risk that the cam will start "hunting" for the correct focus, and in the process it'll screw up your shot because it may lock on some irrelevant stuff (e.g, pieces of kelp in the water, a small fish in a corner, etc.) instead of your main subejct.
When shooting macro it is usually (although not always) ok to use autofocus, since the distance to your subject is very short, and there's plenty of light (DO use the lights when you're shooting macro, it'll make a HUGE difference; and it'll increase the depth of field significantly, since the cam will close down the iris a few stops - at 1/50th or 1/60th - , as compared to no lights).
So at the beginning of your dive, one of the first things you wanna do is to LOCK the focus to manual, at about 2-3 feet. Pointing the cam to the tips of your fins and then pressing the Manual focus/focus lock button will achieve that. When you do that, you should see the Manual focus symbol in the bottom left corner of your LCD, with the distance it locked the focus at (e.g., 3ft). That means that everything from 3ft to infinity is going to be in focus, all the time (well, assuming you have enough light, etc.)
When you need to reset the focus, say for a medium shot, go to auto, point to your subject, and when the cam achieves the focus on that subject, LOCK the focus.
If the fish, etc. is coming towards you, at some point you'll have to rest/re-lock the focus. Presetting everything to 2 or 3 ft definitely help in this case, and it'll allow you to concentrate on framing and composition instead of focusing. Of course it the fish is getting real close to the lens (e.g., less than 1-2 ft, you may wanna quickly swich back to auto, as long as the fish fills most of your frame. The beauty of the Bluefin is that this is so easy to do, flawlessly and super smoothly, while still in the Rec mode, because of its phenomenal "smart handles" and their very intuitive layout of buttons.
Again, we're just skiming the surface here, we could talk for hours about this.
Hope that helps,
Nick
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when I edit it up.
