Over/Under with Dome Port

One of our dive buddies had a pool party at his house this weekend. I took my D100 and Aquautica housing to play around with. Even though I do mostly macro, I took the Nikkor 14mm lens and 8-inch dome port to try some over/under shots. I've never tried an over/under before, and I really didn't have a clue what I was doing, but a few shots were halfway decent. It was fairly simple in Photoshop Elements to balance the over and under parts. I didn't spend much time setting up the shot or using Photoshop, but I see the possibilities of over/under.

The best part is that it cost nothing to play around like this. Praise digital!

From what I understand, the hardest part about over/unders is balancing the exposure. It looks like you've done a pretty good job lighting up the UW portion w/ your strobe(s) From what I understand I think it will be harder when you have a deep background that is naturally lit only.

Very cool!

Cheers

James

Nice shots!

Can you describe more precisely what you did in photoshop to the images?

Would like to know... And I wonder, what these half and half diopters are

still ment to do... quite obsolete these days it seems...

Andi:

If you meter f16 for the above water part shot and f5.6 for the below water part of the shot - what do you do?

You can probably get enough light from your strobes to light the underwater foreground to f16 (maybe) but what about the uw background?

So you knock down the above water background (the whole thing) by using an ND filter up there. (in this example, a 3 stop filter).

I could be all wrong though, because I haven't tried all of this yet.

And/Or you may be able to use the magnetic lasso on the top/bottom to adjust the exposure from the RAW.

HTH

James

I shot Aperture Priority and varied the f stop from about f12 to f18. I metered the exposure with the camera just as the shot shows, so it was a combined/average/hybrid exposure. I used the SB80-DX strobe in wide angle mode and fired it on DTTL.

In other words, I didn't have a clue, I was just playing around, which is great with digital, since it's free.

I shot JPEGs. In Photoshop, I drew a mask on the air section with the select brush, then I adjusted brightness, contrast, and color. Then I inversed the mask and did the same with the water part. I didn't try to do much adjustment of U/W flesh tones.

I won't say that I learned a lot, but it was fun. I'll definitely try some over/unders the next time we go diving (Fiji late this year).

I think Jimbo makes a great point that one of the best things about digital is that it encourages the photographer to experiment. Now that has to be good for all our photography!

Sorry guys... Again I am a victim of not beeing a native english speaker

I think I was not explaining my thoughts well enough,...

1. Yes I thought you were manipulating on the brightness & contrast.

2. My main concern was, why the above and surface part of the image

seems not to have a big difference in the size of the objects as usual.

Actually there is difference in size, but it is not that drastic.

I know that you can buy diopters for these problems, which are

basically a half maginifier (or shrinker) above (or below) the horizontal

line in the middle. But you need to have a quite plain water surface!

And I do not know the correct English name for the "half-lenses"

So I was wondering if JIMBO managed to reduce the magnifying effect

of the underwater parts in Photoshop. As this is something I had no

clue of, after thinking about it for a while.. How can you cope with it,

when you have such a strong wave in the image? Maybe you find a

nice apporoach, but we'll have to move this topic into the tweaking

section

best regards, andi

Andi, your English is fine!

And I agree with Alex about the experimenting that is possible - and fun - with digital.

I may not understand the optics correctly, but here goes:

Using a flat (macro) port underwater does in effect make the lens have an apparent wider angle. With a dome port, however, you don't have this effect. My 14mm lens has the same focal length for both the above water and below water portions of the shot, assuming that it is well-matched to the dome port.

The bottom line is, I REALLY love the 60mm and 105mm lenses, and that is what I shoot on most dives. I use the 14mm mainly for land shots (usually to make my wife as tall as the nearby skyscraper!). But experimenting is fun, especially when you don't have to wait a week to get film processed. I definitely will try some over/unders on my next dive trip. If they work, great. If they don't, okay.

But this ease of trying things with digital, and the instant feedback, has made U/W photography more fun than it has been in years.

By the way, my wife/dive buddy is a good sport about being the 400-Foot Woman. Check her out at this link:

http://www.ajc.com/travel/content/travel/p...2003/week1.html

Click on her thumbnail at the bottom. She's not the 400-Foot Woman in this one, but she's the one modeling her... uh... undergarment. That's her 15 minutes of fame!