First dive trip with Camera

Hi

I have just returned from a liveaboard trip to the red sea, the first diving trip with my new camera. I would like some feedback on some of my photos so that I can improve as I am off to Thailand in six weeks, and have some diving planned.

I have a canon 960is, with canon underwater housing and an Inon wide angle lense (Not big fisheye one). I continually white balanced on my hand at various depths to try and get all the colours as they should be.

Here are some of my photos from the trip:

I feel that I have already learnt a lot from my trip, but want to progress further

Many thanks for any feedback

Congrats on the trip and the new camera for diving photos. Your photos remind me of mine in several ways. Upon looking at the work shown via members here and reading on underwater diving, here are some thoughts. I have been critiqueing some of my pics and the thoughts are similar.

First, immediately get The Unerwater Photographer, 3rd ed. by Martin Edge. I learned more in 1 hour with it than with 10 yrs of trying to figure it out by myself. Seriously!

After reading it and looking your photos and mine, here are thoughts I take from it and project to your shots.

Consider what these would have looked like if you could have been lower and closer.

Take the 4th pic for example. What if you had been close enough that all you saw was the anemone and the fish and you were below it shooting up, or at least level with it. The 3 dimensional depth and interest might have been higher.

Same with pic 2. Consider if you had been level with him and close enough to see the eye sharply with inner mouth details. The whole fish would not have been in the pic but the pic might have been more impressive and dramatic. I think the angle with the fish leading to the upper left works well.

Consider an eye to eye pic with the nudi or at least horizontal relative to him with the high depth of field with your lens on wide angle and high f-stop and what that might look like.

What would the ray pic have been like if you had been laying on the bottom, on the left side from the shot taken... and with half the distance. Not saying the ray would have accepted that from you but imagining what that would be like, having the tail leading to the upper left of the pic again.

Does that any of that make any sense? I am just a beginner to this as well and the others will likely have far better insight.

The more I read and study, the more I seem to be thinking.. get below and shoot up and get closer than you think possible and once there, try to get closer.

Yours are attractive snapshots of a great vacation and great for memories of what you saw and looks like having a good time.

Consider what these would have looked like if you could have been lower and closer.

Totally agree, the golden rule is get close to eliminate as much water between the lens and the object as possible. If you think you're close enough, your not, get closer still.

Of course, getting closer and lower requires great boyancy, so as not to damage any reefs.

For your first dives with the camera, you've gotten some nice shots there though!

Ryan.

Congrats on the trip and the new camera for diving photos. Your photos remind me of mine in several ways. Upon looking at the work shown via members here and reading on underwater diving, here are some thoughts. I have been critiqueing some of my pics and the thoughts are similar.

 

First, immediately get The Unerwater Photographer, 3rd ed. by Martin Edge. I learned more in 1 hour with it than with 10 yrs of trying to figure it out by myself. Seriously!

 

After reading it and looking your photos and mine, here are thoughts I take from it and project to your shots.

 

Consider what these would have looked like if you could have been lower and closer.

Take the 4th pic for example. What if you had been close enough that all you saw was the anemone and the fish and you were below it shooting up, or at least level with it. The 3 dimensional depth and interest might have been higher.

 

Same with pic 2. Consider if you had been level with him and close enough to see the eye sharply with inner mouth details. The whole fish would not have been in the pic but the pic might have been more impressive and dramatic. I think the angle with the fish leading to the upper left works well.

 

Consider an eye to eye pic with the nudi or at least horizontal relative to him with the high depth of field with your lens on wide angle and high f-stop and what that might look like.

 

What would the ray pic have been like if you had been laying on the bottom, on the left side from the shot taken... and with half the distance. Not saying the ray would have accepted that from you but imagining what that would be like, having the tail leading to the upper left of the pic again.

Does that any of that make any sense? I am just a beginner to this as well and the others will likely have far better insight.

 

The more I read and study, the more I seem to be thinking.. get below and shoot up and get closer than you think possible and once there, try to get closer.

 

Yours are attractive snapshots of a great vacation and great for memories of what you saw and looks like having a good time.

Thanks for the info, I will look into that book, I know they did have it on the boat and I read some of it whilst travelling. Is the book more focused on SLR photography though???

I understand your points on lower and closer, but sometimes I just didnt want to get closer, or couldnt, the eel was pretty big and I didnt want to get that close and the Picasso was quite elusive and really hard to get close to.

With regards to controlling the aperture on my camera, I dont think that I can, which is a bit dissappointing. I am currently learning with an SLR topside and starting to understand everything about these controls. If you know differently about my camera please let me know.

A number of the things you have said make sense, but I tried, e.g. getting closer and lower to the ray, I tried and it decided to swim off, plus I stirred up the bottom getting down lower. I think I need to be more confident and get used to this underwater

What would you reccommend, to keep my wideangle lense on and get really close to objects or take the lense off so that I dont need to be that close (this is what I resorted to on my trip)?

Thanks for your help

I agree with the previous comments. The only other advice i can offer is to try using various items for your manual white balance. Using your hand works in a pinch but it is not ideal. Try bringing a white slate with you. This will give you a a more realistic colour shift and bring out more colour in your wide angle shots. I regularly use a white slate with once side lightly shaded with grey (try using light HB pencil). This grey side gives an even more exaggerated colour shift and also has the added affect of fooling your camera into making the image brighter than it actually is. It is always easier to reduce colour and brightness in photoshop afterwards than it is to increase it.