Canon Ixus 75 results

After much deliberation before my recent holiday to Sharm el Sheikh I decided to purchase an underwater camera and housing. On this trip I mainly used it for snorkeling to get used to it, although in the future I'll be taking it diving with me.

I found using it while snorkeling very difficult as the water was fairly deep and I remembered reading that I should get on a level with the subject, or below looking up at it. Being fairly buoyant myself it wasn't always possible, and I'm wondering whether this also contributed to the slightly blurred look to some of the photos as I wasn't able to keep as still and stable as when I'm diving. Anyway would really appreciate any comments/suggestions - good or bad on any of the pictures in this gallery, which were some of the better ones I took.

I'm not really experienced in post processing techniques, so most have just been 'auto fixed' with Picnik or 'Enhanced' with iphoto. Some of them just appear really blurry and noisy to me, but I'm pretty sure it's something that I'm doing rather than the camera. Practise makes perfect I guess...

Sarah

Great job Sarah. I am impressed. You did super, and all taken snorkeling. I like the first shot of the butterfly pair. I'm guessing the lack of sharpness you see is related to the longer exposure times needed to get enough light at depth. Might be time to think about that strobe although you were getting some very good color for what you're working with. Put your tank on girl, it's tons easier with scuba. Have fun!

Steve

Your photos are beautiful! Looking at the EXIF info, the shutter times aren't very slow. I don't see blurring.

Snorkeling can be tough. A weight belt would help next time.

Are you using a Magic Filter, or are we seeing some good editing or white balancing techniques?

Thanks very much, I'm glad you like them. I've not been using a magic filter, thought I'd see how I get on first without it. Most were just taken using the underwater setting on the camera but once I got a bit more confident I was manual white balancing on the back of my hand. Most of the manual ones came out a bit wrong though as I didn't realise I had to hold my hand as far away as the subject would be, the colours came out a bit warm, almost red. Sometimes I white balanced on the sandy bottom which seemed quite effective. Some of the pictures came out exactly as they are, but with a lot of them I just put them on iphoto or picnik and clicked the 'auto fix' or 'enhance' button which made them a bit better. The one of the blue spotted ray hasn't had anything done to it, or the freckled hawkfish on the coral, or the clam.

Another problem I had was breathing. Although I got better over the week, it was hard to dive down to say 3-4 meters and white balance, and hope that my chosen fish was facing the right way, and photograph it before I ran out of breath. But hopefully taking it diving will solve the problem. The moray picture in the gallery was the only picture I got of it as it was so deep, which was a shame.

Looking at the gallery, the blurring isn't too visible but when I have them blown up quite large on my screen there is some strange blurring of the coral on, for example 330 of the masked butterfly fish and also on the clam picture. I've sent off for them to be printed though as a memento so I'll see what they look like on paper.

I have to say it's quite depressing when you see them all on your little digital camera screen and think they're good and then get them on the computer and half could go straight in the bin!

But I've definitely got the bug, next stop strobe and wide angle lens - I love taking big wide reef shots with all those anthias. Lovely.

Oh, and also a white slate :-)