I'm nervous and need some good help!!!

Hi folks-

Heres the deal: I have a DSC-W1 and just got the mpk-wa marine pak for it. I am not very experienced at all with underwater shooting. I need someone to kinda guide me here with what I should do about settings on my camera for shooting. I am going to be diving in St. Thomas probably no deeper than 80 feet and no shallower than 30. What should I do about a flash or lighting? Shutter speed, iso etc...??? Also should I get the red filter?

In febuary I was in mexico and bought a $40 underwater camera from the dive shop. The pics were TERRIBLE!!! Tons of scatter and the color sucked!!! I want to minimize this problem by using my DSC-W1.

Thank you so much for your help. I dont get to dive the ocean much, so I want to try and get some good pics.

Hello,

If the marine pack is the heavy ziplock thingy ... don't do it.

If it is a real housing, if you shoot without a strobe, don't use the flash. That's about it.

And of course you need to correct the colors on your computer after that.

You coult use a red filter but as I said, you can't show anybody pictures without touching them on the computer to rebalance the colors, gama, contrast.

Vlad

Its not the platic ziplock thing, its a housing here is the link:

http://www.sonystyle.com/is-bin/INTERSHOP....roductSKU=MPKWA

Since I cant afford a strobe (unless anyone knows of one under $100), can I use a flash light? Also any ideas on what shutter speed to use and iso?

Hi Brandon,

I had a look at the specs for this camera at:

http://www.dpreview.com/reviews/specs/Sony/sony_dscw1.asp

It looks like it will be fine for underwater use. You can use the flash in the marine pack but MAKE SURE you are less than a foot from what you are taking a picture of. Otherwise, you will need an external strobe.

I also noted that this camera is automatic only - meaning no manual control over aperture or shutterspeed. This means that it will use f2.8 every time. This will result in very little depth of field, so make sure to focus carefully on your subject and get the eyes in focus.

You can use a flashlight for night dive photos but it won't do any good during the day.

If I had to make a recommendation, I'd say sell the camera on Ebay and get one of the cheap Canon's (A95) with manual controls.

HTH

James

James you are spot on with the f2.8 auto comment .. however .. there is and i forget how to do it as it has been about 5 years for me since using one .. there is a way of tricking the camera if i remember correctly ... i learnt it at first on the point and shoot auto canons ... maybe someone else will know who uses them ... but that is one of the worst things about them is it causes inconsistency when it gets confused .. if you can set white balance to cloudy this helps (even if it is not cloudy)

the trick may have been to aim it upwards at the sun and hold the shutter button down aim at subject and then shoot .. with the flash on definately on mode .. but that doesnt sound right ... it was a sweet trick though ... proving once again that man was clever than electronics .. but also proving a little more forgetfull.

Some cameras have preset modes that you can use. Like "outdoors" or something like that - that will bump up the f-stop. Does that sound right?

Cheers

James

yes ... but no at the same time ... it really was something stupid that you wouldn't logically think of doing .. it may have been scenic mode or 'outdoors' combined with soemthign else .. but yeh the outdoors thing is a good start .. i just played with my canon sd20 to see if i could work it out .. and i am pretty sure that you are on the right tracks .. I used to have it in my photo course i wrote .. but i can't find it on this pc so i must have scrapped it.