First attempt at available light, Turks & Caicos

Hi all,

I just got back from a great week of diving in the Turks & Caicos, and wanted to share some of my results. After reading posts on this forum and others (digitaldiver.net) I decided to try my hand at available light shooting, using filters and had some promising results. Have a look and provide any suggestions or thoughts on how I could have improved these images...I'm here to learn! Oh yah...I'm using a Tiffen FL-D 67mm threaded filter and a white dive slate for manual whitebalance.

One thing I struggled with (aside from remembering to constantly manually white-balance using my dive slate) was depth of field and focus. I'm using an Oly 5050 rig in the Oly housing, and have turned off the full-time AF feature to save power. Using the filter definitely limits the light coming in so I was never able to go much above f/5.6 and 100/sec. Often had to go slower just to get the image. Practice will improve that I suppose....

Anyway, let me know what you think. I had a blast shooting and really like the natural feel the filter gives.

Cheers,

Matthew

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Pretty good color Matthew. You can really go a long way with a FL-D and FL-B filter, eh?

I especially like the panning shot of the parrotfish - good stuff!

THanks for sharing your photos.

James

I like the shots too. The nassau grouper is my favourite. How deep were the images taken.

One reason why the parrotfish and the grouper are clearer than the other pictures is that you are shooting the light rather than across it or into it. I do not want to tell you to never shoot across or into the light - but one tip I have is to always consider the direction of your available light when taking images and planning your approach to the subject.

Alex

Thanks for the feedback Alex! It was your posts and threads about your experiments that got me excited about trying to shoot with available light, so double thanks!

Most of these images were shot between 30-50 feet.

I can see now what you mean about the direction of the light. In some cases when the sun is almost directly overhead, isn't it hard to shoot reef scenics without having to shoot across or into the light? Any thoughts on how to avoid this, or are you suggesting only that the character of the image will be different and to realize this and use it consciously?

Here's another that I think illustrates your point of capturing the reflected light only....not the best image, but shows what you mean I think...or does it?

Thanks again,

Matthew