Tell me the truth

Hello Everybody

Can somebody tell me what you REALLY think about these pictures. They where taken in Zanzibar earlier this month. These where basically my first UW pictures. Don't have too many chances taking pictures because of the amount of students I face. Mostly OWD.

System I was using was canon G9 with Canon's own housing. I don't have external flash and didn't use internal at all. I shoot RAW, and I used Apertures, auto exposure. levels and colors. White balance was manually set underwater. They're only resized, NO cropping.

If anybody can also recommend me a good strobe to use with the housing. Easiest for me to get is something from Sea&Sea. Here in Phuket it's really hard to get any other brands.

Hello Everybody

 

Can somebody tell me what you REALLY think about these pictures. They where taken in Zanzibar earlier this month. These where basically my first UW pictures. Don't have too many chances taking pictures because of the amount of students I face. Mostly OWD.

 

System I was using was canon G9 with Canon's own housing. I don't have external flash and didn't use internal at all. I shoot RAW, and I used Apertures, auto exposure. levels and colors. White balance was manually set underwater. They're only resized, NO cropping.

 

If anybody can also recommend me a good strobe to use with the housing. Easiest for me to get is something from Sea&Sea. Here in Phuket it's really hard to get any other brands.

For your first underwater photos??

I really like them!

Maybe change your white balance to AUTO or CLOUDY next time- and try the internal flash 2 but get as close as you can before touching the ZOOM button.

damo

If anybody can also recommend me a good strobe to use with the housing. Easiest for me to get is something from Sea&Sea. Here in Phuket it's really hard to get any other brands.

Hi!

The YS-110s are nice.

*** Nice bright and wide strobe

*** Has Optical TTL capability

*** Has Target Light

*** Uses AAs

*** Can be fired via electrical sync cord/Could move with you to a DSLR setup

JMHO ... HTH!

for your first images, you are off to a good start. The compositional aspects of these is above average for a starter in my opinion. The next steps for you IMHO are to start paying more attention to the aspects of you image that are not the subject- like the foreground and background. the Hawkfish gets a little lost in the background and the lion has a bit of a distracting background. Another area for improvement would be to start taking more control of you camera- all of these images would be improved if they were underexposed by a stop or so which I believe can be done with your current setup as well as by using an external flash to control the light on your subject. Nice work and keep shooting.

Thanks for all the advice this far. The pictures where taken while leading a dive, so didn't have too much time to think composition. Only one diver, he also had camera.

Any advices on "rule of thirds"? I like to get my main subject on the middle of the picture, should I try to get rid of this habit?

Currently I'm using a white slate to set up my white balance, and I do it before every shot. You think it really might be better just to shoot on underwater mode, or cloudy as suggested?

And final thing. Currently I'm shooting on "P" mode, Should I start to use the full manual "M" mode to achieve better pictures? What would be good settings to start, WA/macro? Remember I DON'T have external flash yet.

These are fine for your first efforts. Good job on that.

As for composition, I don't think time is ever the issue for composition. It is key to whether you really should even bother taking the image or not. Whether the shot is for ID or artistic reasons.

It has been awhile since I have shot with a P&S camera but I think manual is a better option because it allows you to control the image and what the end result will look like.

At this point I would focus on one aspect that you wish to work on for the dive and try to get that to work/improve. Whether it be composition of light etc. Trying to work at a lot of aspects all at once when you first start may be overwhelming and may make it harder for you to decifer after what worked and what did not work on that dive.

IMHO

Cheers

Todd

Clearly, you don't have to worry about the technical side, as exposure, focus etc is absolutely fine, though you might be surprised at the dramatic effects a little under-exposure can give (just try this on your computer using Aperture).

I'm afraid that you need a few dives to do your own thing, and concentrate on the camera: I teach or photograph, but I wouldn't take in inexperienced divers and a camera at the same time. You would have time to spot interesting things, take several photos of each, and play with composition etc. if those **** clients were out of the picture...

Tim

B)