Short Underwater Photography Course

Hi,

As I'm the only person in my local dive club (http://www.desertsportsdivingclub.com/) with anything other than a Point & Shoot camera I have been talked into giving a small presentation / lecture on underwater photography.

In order to make sure I'm not to far off the mark I'll be brave and ask for "peer review" (if that is correct term) from anybody out there. Any comments etc will be appreciated.

It's a 4MB file so as not to clog the wetpixel server here is a link to it :-

http://www.images-underwater.net/Photocourse.html

Cheers,

Richard B.

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Check out latest underwater exploits :-

http://www.images-underwater.net/

Any comments etc will be appreciated.

Hi Richard,

It looks like you put a lot of work into developing your presentation and you covered a lot of ground. Looks like you accomplished what you set out to do for your dive club very well. I only noticed two things I would change. First to be a little anal, there are about 4 or 5 misspellings so I'd run the spell checker. Enhance, buoyancy, debatable, and higher show up with new spellings and maybe it's a language difference, but over here Aperture would have an E. I only note this because if your giving a class the first thing you want to project is credibility.

More importantly I'd ask you to hammer on the need for photographers to protect the reef. You cover it in the section on buoyancy but I'd tell them up front too, the first or second slide. Please leave no doubt in your audience’s mind that their number one priority is to protect the reef. They will have to bypass some shots but that's OK. Please get them started on the right foot. Tell them again on the last slide, along with the most important rule of underwater photography. "Have fun"

Thanks for putting it out there and congrats!

Cheers,

Steve

Hi Steve,

Many thanks.

Must be bad if my spelling is being corrected by a rebel I'll change it, problem is I'm dyslexic so I can't recognise the correct word when I do see it.

The protect the reef / no touch is a very good point, I know the club members here and they are all very good so almost goes with out saying, but you are 110% right I should hammer it home.

(The Local "enviromental" group out here a few years ago published some promotional shots of with them all standing on the Reef !! sadly a long way to go but they have whale sharks in aquariums and are pouring trillions of tons into the sea to build luxury houses.)

Cheers,

Richard B.

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Check out latest underwater exploits :-

http://www.images-underwater.net/

You say "Straight lines can bend due to lens (Chromic abiration)".

That distortion would be "Spherical Aberration". "Chromatic aberration" is the separation of colors.

Good presentation. Makes me want to go to the Red Sea.

Steve.

Thanks SteveB, just corrected in my master copy (not reposted yet).

It's not the Red Sea but close, out the bottom head north then west.

Its the Gulf of Oman and Arabian Gulf, same fish but bigger with poor vizability and green water.

Just got to watch out for passing US warships when you surface !

We had a group of tech divers from our club dive to close to a warship (in +90m of water in rebreathers) and they got all upset and didn't believe they we were diving a wreck on the bottom so they all spent the night being "entertained".

Cheers,

Richard B.

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Check out latest underwater exploits :-

http://www.images-underwater.net/

Very nice presentation. Steve caught the spelling so I'm now sending him all my manuscripts.

I noticed the recommended aperture settings at the bottom of your slides. You may want to make some differentiation in the wide angle slide between flat and dome port use. Aperture settings of f4 - 5 on a dome port will most likely yield extremely poor corner sharpness, extending well into the center of the frame.

Otherwise a wonderful presentation and your students will come away from your presentation with sage advice!