Shark photos - any advice?

Hi everyone,

On saturday I did a dive at South Maroubra (Sydney) and for those who know the area, the sharks are back!

There were 4 or 5 Grey Nurses in the cave, pretty big ones too.

Now I'd like some advice on photography, if possible.

The water was pretty murky, and the cave dark, so it was pretty tricky. There was too much sediment in the water to use my strobe, so it was just available light.

Setup: olympus C-50, in a PT-014, Aperture priority.

The first photo here was taken at f/5.6 and 1/10 second exposure. By some incredible luck I was able to hold the camera steady enough to get a reasonable exposure at that speed. I completely forgot about the option of upping the ISO (which was at the minimum setting of 80) and kicked myself for it later.

There were another 18 attempted photos which turned out way too blurry, which is not surprising since shutter speed was between 1/8s and 1/13s.

Analysing what I should have done later, I figured I should push it up to max ISO, and open the aperture more, to try to get some faster shutter speed.

Luckily, on Sunday diving at Longreef I had a chance to try this out, when my buddy spotted a grey nurse hiding under a rock:

I put ISO up to 320 (maximum) and opened the aperture up to 4.8 (widest), which got me a shutterspeed of 1/100s, which is plenty. A bit noisy when at full size, but fine for web viewing.

The photo above turned out pretty good, but all the rest the camera was focusing on particles in the water, and the shallow depth of field meant the shark was out of focus.

So, what should I have done? (Don't say get a better camera!)

My guess: Keep ISO at max, and close up the aperture a bit to get better focusing, but keeping it open enough to get at least 1/50 or 1/60 shutter speed.

Any comments???

Hi,

It sounds like you just about did all you could. In some situations, there's just not enought light or not good enough conditions to get a photo.

At the distance that you were shooting, you will still get enough depth of field to shoot a shark, even at a low f-stop value. Any blur is probably due to the shark or you moving.

Your usable ISO will depend on your camera. On a compact, I would always use the base ISO, start with a mid-range f-stop and a minimum shutterspeed of 1/45th. You can get sharp wideangle photos at that speed if the subject isn't moving fast (no flash).

If you can't get that, bump up the ISO accordingly. With a compact, it sounds like you hit your noise limit at ISO320 which sounds about right.

So in short - you did everything right - you just didn't have conditions that allowed for good photography.

Cheers

James

Thanks!

Going to Forster in two weeks, a group of my friends went there last year and saw about 25 grey nurses on one dive, so I should get a chance for some more practice!

Ian