DIVE PHOTO GUIDE (Link > HERE )

British Society of UW Photographers > Link HERE

Snorkel Ireland Link > HERE

Snorkel Donegal Video Silver Strand Malin Beg > HERE (8Min)

Dingle Snorkelling HERE
Snorkelling seems best suited to video.
Underwater Ireland web site > HERE (Excellent video)
UW focussing lights Link > HERE " One thing is for certain – all serious underwater photographers and videographers need to have at least one light."

Semi dry suit

John Collins is the man. Workshops with Ocean Addicts doing UW photography.

Covers Macro, wide angle and video with SLRs - 2 separate workshops.
He did 2 workshops in 2015 - returning from Indonesia 25 Sept.2015

Underwater, light is affected by:

Depth
Subject distance
Weather and surface conditions

Basic Principles Of Light Underwater

The Underwater Photography Blues

If you’re not using the appropriate strobes, or not using your strobes properly to light your subjects, your images will quite literally take on a bluish hue.

Water absorbs light very quickly. It is 800 times denser. Not only does this result in dull, monotone colors, but it also decreases contrast and image sharpness.

New underwater photographers often get frustrated from the blue / gray hue of their images - a direct result of the properties of water and the affect of light absorption.

Specific frequencies of ambient light get absorbed at different depths, from the longest wavelength to shortest (basically the colors of the rainbow, remember ROYGBIV?). Red nearly disappears at around 5 meters, followed by orange at 10 meters, yellow at 20 m

eters, green at 30 meters and eventually even blue at 60 meters.

Refraction
Technically, refraction is the change in direction of a wave due to a change in its speed, which occurs when passing from one medium to another - such as between the ocean and the air in your mask or dome port.

Remember that practically, what you see in your viewfinder or LCD screen is what you get. Refraction is an issue that you need not worry yourself over, but we wouldn't be doing our jobs if we didn't mention it. There are ramifications for how the ports on your housing are designed, and where your lenses focus underwater. However, the manufacturers design ports to work within the parameters of refraction, and in certain situations, like when shooting a DSLR and a mid-range zoon lens, you may need to use a diopter in order to obtain the best focus underwater, but this is a totally different topic from lighting.

STROBES

Due to this color loss underwater, underwater photography requires a means of compensation to restore the colors and contrast lost from absorption. This is accomplished by using artificial light (underwater strobes), and in some scenarios can be accomplished with filters.

Strobes emit daylight-balanced light that help to paint the color back into your images, create contrast, accentuate textures and retain details. Sometimes strobes are used to fill in light where shadows dominate, while in other instances strobes provide the key lighting for your image. Strobes are arguably the best investment you can maketo improve your underwater photography.

How Underwater Strobes Work

Without strobes, underwater images are generally plagued with a dull blue hue.

Strobes work by discharging light at various power settings. Technically, each power setting relates to a flash duration - the amount of time the bulb emits light, rather than a lower power emission of light. Generally, strobe duration is somewhere close to 1/1000 of a second, far shorter than the time your shutter would normally be open. The lower the power setting, the shorter the flash duration. Note that under ordinary circumstances, your camera and strobe can only sync at certain shutter speeds.

Strobes must recycle after each discharge. Recycle time is an important consideration when selecting a strobe. When a strobe recycles, the batteries transfer a high voltage charge to a capacitor, which dumps the charge into the flash tube when triggered. This is no different than the strobes used by studio photographers, only ours are waterproof.

While underwater photography with one strobe is possible, you’ll need two strobes in order to produce rich colors, eliminate harsh shadows, and establish creative lighting

Using two strobes also gives you more options and more control over lighting angles, and general lighting quality.

Syncing Strobes & Cameras

Strobe connections are very important. These cords allow your camera and strobes to work in sync so that the emission of light from the strobe syncs with the camera shutter, creating the exposure you desire. Additionally it is important to understand that your camera and strobes may only sync within a specific range of shutter speeds (see high speed sync below).

The way that DSLR cameras sync with external strobes is far simpler. The hotshoe connection on the top of the camera connects to bulkhead connections on the housing, which connect to sync cords that are connected to the strobes themselves. Many of today’s strobe manufacturers have developed TTL adapters to work with the proprietary TTL technology from Nikon (iTTL) and Canon (eTTL)

TTL is not perfect and often a quick look at the camera’s LCD screen and changing the power settings on the strobes, or changing strobe position, is the best option to achieve a correct exposure.

High Speed Sync

If you read your strobe’s instruction manual it will probably state that your strobes will only sync when shooting at shutter speeds between 1/60 and 1/250. In reality you can still shoot at shutter speeds less than 1/60 and in most instances at shutter speeds higher than 1/250, but it depends on the combination of camera, housing and strobes

Smaller strobes are great for macro and short distances, while larger subjects and wide angle scenes require more light output.

Do yourself a favor and pick up a pair of the most powerful strobes within your budget

Modern strobes have a wide range of power settings that will provide the versatility to properly light everything from super macro critters to ultra wide angle reef scenics. Keep in mind that due to the way that water absorbs light, even the most powerful strobes are only practically useful for a distance of a few feet.

Truth be told, almost any strobe is powerful enough for macro photography.When shooting macro you are close to your subject and lighting is solely by strobe without the need to balance ambient light. Although most macro photography is shot at small apertures (higher f/stops) to maximize depth of field, more often than not you’ll find yourself shooting at less than full power. When shooting macro with larger strobes you will need to significantly dial down the power to prevent overexposing the image.

Most modern strobes offer TTL (through the lens) metering, a system that automatically adjusts the flash output to achieve a correct exposure.

Wide Angle Lighting (When Size Matters)

Shooting wide angle requires additional power and a wider angle of coverage. The larger the guide number, the more powerful the strobe

Technically the Guide Number = f/stop x distance (specified in meters or feet) and is ordinarily expressed at ISO 100. So a guide number of 22 (ISO 100/meters) can expose a subject 1 meter from the camera at f/22, or 2 meters at f/11. These are guidelines and rated for shooting in air versus water, which of course yields a significantly lower effective underwater guide number due to absorption.

Wide angle underwater photography lighting

Power is but one consideration when selecting a strobe. A wide range of sizes, weight and battery types make traveling with some models easier than others. An advanced consideration is color temperature, which we address in the color temperature and white balance section.

Underwater Strobe Positioning

By placing your strobes on articulated arms that are extended away from your camera, you will achieve even and soft lighting with limited shadows. This positioning is also required to reduce the illumination of particles in the water column, otherwise known as “backscatter”. In all instances diffusers will help widen the angle of coverage and reduce hot spots in your images.

Shooting with two strobes gives you the flexibility to utilize one strobe as your key (main) light and the other a fill light, or use both strobes to evenly light a scene with soft flattering light and minimal shadows

Sidelighting: creates texture and dimension, emphasizes certain features of the subject
Toplighting: creates the effect of uni-directional lighting, prevents the illumination of parts of the foreground that you may wish to leave unlit.
Backlighting: creates a dramatic and unique effect of glowing edges around a silhouetted subject, can make translucent subjects appear to glow from within. (see advanced lighting techniques)

Tricky Lighting Situations

Reflective surfaces such as silver fish
The best approach to shooting reflective fish is to angle your strobes out a bit and shoot at an angle where the reflection of your strobes won’t return back in the direction of your camera. Remember your high school geometry class - the angle of reflection equals angle of incidence.

High contrast between subject and background

When shooting a dark subject against a bright background, you must light the foreground with a significant amount of strobe light, yet meter your camera settings to not overexpose the background or adjacent foreground (like white sand for example). Often you may opt to chimp your camera settings to balance good ambient fill and use your strobe to open up the shadows and details without blasting the subject at full power.

High dynamic range (Picture left)

For all practical purposes, you cannot recover detail in areas that are blown out, so you are best to avoid it.

In order to light and detail the inside of this shipwreck, a sacrifice was made by blowing out the sun. While still marginally acceptable in this instance, it is best to avoid blowing out highlights, which becomes very distracting in an image. Ideally, getting down a little lower and positioning the sun behind the shipwreck would have been a solution, but in this instance was impossible due to sharp metal protusions inside the wreck.

Martin Edge Tips https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XMU7LzWbiOs

1. Get Low.

There is a small school of fish in
front of his fin

Creating good negative space
Fast Shutter speed = dark background
Light the subject.

Inward Lighting

Top of the image is dark because the light is aimed back.

Isolate the subject with a snoot.

Motion Blur > Wide angle lens // 1/15s // Flash on REAR curtain sync
As you press the shutter rotate the camera 1/4 turn
Subject should be sharp and the background blurred!!

Image Overlay

Multiple exposure

Colour Correction in LR5 > https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0cQgNMg3lfo
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Underwater Photography
My surface photography can be seen at > johnkent15.simplesite.com

Cameras and Housing

UW Photography Guide

http://www.uwphotographyguide.com/underwater-photography-guide-beginners

Strobes YS-D1 $530 Review >   HERE

Amazon £464

In the beginning, diving is hard enough as it is. Keeping yourself in a fairly neutral horizontal position, keeping distance from corals and sea urchins, minding your air, noticing your dive buddy and more… That’s already plenty to handle. If you add a camera to that equation too early, something has to give and you might be risking yourself, others or the delicate marine life around you.

I have one more night to do to complete my Open Water.
The advice I am reading suggests I do at least 5-10 dives before bringing down a camera.
Don't consider a DSLR until you have buoyancy control.
Don't overestimate your diving skills.
Currents, poor visibility, gear malfunctions may occur.

   Guide to UW photography

When taking an interchangeable lens camera underwater, you will need to deal with interchangeable ports, extensions and gears, making the process more complicated and more prone to human error and leakage. The advanced settings allow more things to be changed underwater, which requires good diving skills to focus on camera operation without endangering yourself and others.

The lens port limits the size of the lens you can use.

UW photographers prefer prime lenses (fixed zoom), or Ultra-Wide zoom lenses such as the Tokina 10-17.

VIDEO UNDERWATER
Film School 1 _ Equipment

One relatively cheap contender, is the GoPro Hero 3+ Black Edition. With its wide angle lens and even the ability to shoot at a high frame rate so that you can produce slow motion action, I’ve seen some great footage shot on these cameras. On a recent trip to Indonesia filming whale sharks, while the rest of the divers were using the most impressive high end photographic equipment, an Australian diver had a Go Pro attached to a clothes rail from a wardrobe on the boat that he was using as his pole. In the well lit surface waters he got shots that made many of the professionals on board somewhat jealous!

Full control of white balance to get the best colours is essential for good video, and the extent to which this can be controlled varies massively. If the camera knows what white looks like, then it can compensate for loss of natural colours filtered out underwater. Stills cameras usually restore colour by the powerful light from their synchronised strobes. Achieving accurate white balance on them – even on the surface – involves either extremely complex delving into the menu; underwater in housings built for achieving still images this more often than not is simply impossible, and the quality of video suffers accordingly. If you are buying a stills camera and housing with the intention of shooting video make absolutely sure that you can control the white balance.

Film School 2 The Basics

There are a few basic rules that have to be grasped if you ever want to produce watchable footage and maybe one day produce an edit that you will be proud to show. We all see so much visual media whether on television or online, yet many of us forget the obvious basic rules that are so apparent from everything we watch. Here is Boyle’s Three Laws for basic underwater video.

1 Keep the camera steady

2 Avoid using autofocus

3 Remember the close / medium / wide rule

First essential lesson is keep the camera steady. If your shots are jumping around everywhere, the effect will be massively amplified on a large screen. This just takes practice but is actually easier in the denser medium of water than in air.

Once you have mastered the skill of taking a steady shot, try taking a steady moving shot, panning the camera to follow your subject. Don’t snatch movements – if you are moving the camera do so smoothly. On land fluid head tripods are the most expensive, the fluid making panning the camera flow more smoothly. Under the sea we are surrounded by fluid!

But it’s still an art that takes lots of practise to perfect. Most video cameras have a steady shot function and that certainly can help, but it’s not a miracle cure. In the sea you may have to contend with current and surge and you may be finning hard to maintain position, while at the same time trying to achieve a steady well-focused shot of a moving wild creature. Just try holding a video camera steady at home for 20 seconds and then imagine doing it in difficult underwater conditions while also maintaining correct buoyancy and position!

You will develop new diving skills to enable you to hover just above coral, or maintain position above a silty sea bed that if stirred up will ruin your footage in a cloud of fine sand.

Secondly, try and avoid using autofocus, particularly for distant subjects. Autofocus means that the camera will lock onto whatever is in the centre of frame and focus on it. This is fine when taking still images that are captured in a nanosecond; however for a video clip of many seconds duration the autofocus will continually readjust, going in and out of focus until it again acquires the sharpest picture. This searching effect can ruin what might otherwise have been a great sequence.

The more distant the image the more difficult it is for the camera to lock onto it, the more the chance of something between you and the subject distracting the autofocus, and the more likelihood of searching and loss of focus.

t’s often difficult to trust your judgement in difficult conditions as to whether a shot is in the sharpest of focus. I’ve often surfaced excited by behaviour or creatures that I have filmed, only to discover that when played back on a high definition large screen it is just that tiny bit soft. Many video cameras now have a very helpful 'peaking' function. Quite simply, it highlights on the monitor the areas of the shot that are in focus, helping you adjust manually to obtain the sharpest picture. I never now film without using this application and it’s amazing how much better the camera is at getting it right than I am!

Finally the close / medium / wide rule. Don’t get me wrong, long flowing shots of subjects definitely have their place in underwater film making. However, the mantra that I will be repeating throughout this series is that a video camera is the greatest story telling tool ever created since a bored Egyptian scratched a symbol on a scrap of papyrus! When you are in the water filming you must have in mind that you are not there to capture a series of still portraits – you are gathering the building blocks for a story you are going to create back home on your computer.

So get as much of a variety of shots as you can. Get wide-angle shots to establish your subject and its environment. Get medium-range shots to show the action. And get close-up shots – eyes, mouth, fins, body texture – to not only illustrate detail of the creature but to make your film clip that much more interesting.

QUICK TIPS | SECONDS OUT

While filming, don’t take shots that are too short. For stills photographers, one flash and they can have an award winning image. It’s a bit harder for us! It’s a classic beginners’ mistake – the stills mentality of 'get the shot and move on.' Lots of wobbling around, a moment of the subject in focus, and they think they have nailed it! Only back in the studio when trying to edit, to tell your story, will you realise that you need so much more...

I have always worked on a rule of thumb that the average length of a clip in a documentary is six seconds. Try counting the length of shots in the next documentary you watch and you may be surprised how many times I’m right. I know that’s ridiculously simplistic; some may be just a second, others 30 seconds; equally, shorter clips may be edited together into a rapid fire sequence. But for a film to flow smoothly and your audience to get a chance to appreciate the shots, I work on the six second rule as a good starting point.

So if you have in your head a minimum shot length of six seconds, add on a handle of a couple of seconds each end for use in editing, and a minimum ten second shot, perfectly focused and totally steady, is what you should be aiming for.

Video >>> HERE

This sequence was shot in the Lembeh Strait and is included in my Sea’s Strangest Square Mile film. I spent a couple of minutes shooting the action in wide angle, then having gathered enough wide footage closed in to capture detail. Even while filming wide angle, in addition to a static wide shot I tried different ideas such as panning across the scene, and back in the studio was glad that I had, as that pan ended up being the first shot of the sequence.

Shot 1 Using a pan to reveal your subject will add some movement and here also emphasises the fish’s camouflage.

Shot 2 Close-up shot to show as much detail as possible.

Shot 3 Semi-close shot taking in all the action, the predator and the prey surrounding it. Close is good but be aware of missing important action or details in the frame. That is where a combination of shots works well.

Shot 4 Another closer shot with some action.

Shot 5 Slightly wider than previous shot but keeping it varied. Very-close, semi-close, wider and the full- wide gives you some contrasting shots and a variety for editing.

Shot 6 Full-wide then zooming into the action. This is an example of adding movement to a static subject.

Shot 7 And finally a semi-close shot showing the whole scene, the predator, the action and the prey .

Video Lighting Underwater

To restore the natural colour underwater, and to produce those superbly vivid coloured images, stills photographers use strobes. The tools available to the underwater videographer are filters and lights, and perhaps the least understood tool – white balance.

Lighting is a subject of its own that we will come to later in the series. Filters are useful for wide-angle shots which are beyond the range of lights; a red filter attached to the housing or camera will restore some of the red spectrum that the water has absorbed and so add colour. However, white balance is the trump card in underwater video.

Our brain often compensates for what we are seeing. We know something is white and so we see it as white. However, in reality a white sheet will look very different in sunshine to under fluorescent lights. So if a camera sees white as in fact a shade of yellow, all other colours will be similarly tinted.

There are two ways to white balance. One is to use the preset options on the camera which give you a range of alternatives such as sunshine, artificial light, cloudy… but most of these are not generally applicable under water. The alternative is manual white balancing.

If the camera is shown what true white is then it will adjust all other colours accordingly. So a white card, or even focusing on a white item on a buddy’s dive kit, shows the camera what white looks like, and it does the rest. Just take a shot without any white balance and then apply white balance – the results at times seem almost miraculous! I do know some cameramen who believe that they can add colour in the edit stage of a film, in post-production. That can be done to an extent, but if you get it right at the filming stage then that has to be best.

Basic Composition

The difference between a good shot and a poor one will usually depend on the amount of thought that has gone into it, and there are two golden rules that apply just as much in video as in stills – the rule of thirds, and the 'foreground, middle ground, background' mantra.

Beginner photographers always tend to position their image in the very centre of the picture, but this is often not the most interesting shot. Watching a film where in every shot the subject was centre frame would very quickly become tedious. There is nothing wrong with having the subject centre frame, but not all the time, and it is the extra creative shots which will make your work stand out.

Imagine that your viewfinder is divided into thirds, by either horizontal or vertical lines. Then try and position your subject according to these lines, avoiding the central section. So picture, for example, a diver swimming along a sandy sea bed. Diver mid frame, and it’s an ordinary shot. Diver below the lower horizontal line, with two thirds of the screen blue water above and bubbles rising to the surface, and you are now creating a moody atmospheric shot which conveys far more of the experience of diving.

Or imagine a simple sea urchin on a kelp stalk. Mid frame it will look fine. But draw your imaginary lines now from top to bottom of your viewfinder, and place the urchin to one side, leaving the other two thirds of the screen as empty sea. How much more interesting is that?

Your subject simply plonked in the middle of an empty screen will look like something from a fish identification book. Use some creativity in framing and positioning your subject and your footage will be far better.

Like any rule, this is not one to follow slavishly. There are times when centre frame is by far the best place for your image. But if you mix up how you frame your images it makes for a far better and watchable film.

The 'foreground, middle ground, background' mantra is again based on looking as your shot in three parts, but this time instead of thinking of the image two dimensionally, we are thinking of three dimensions.

An angelfish with a small coral head in the foreground. Or an angelfish with a small coral head in the foreground plus a school of silver baitfish in the background. No prizes for guessing which will tour out to be the most interesting image. The more layers that there are in your shot, the more interesting it becomes.

Star fish is the lead in - 2 divers give scale and perspective.

VIDEO CLIPS

Demonstrating very clearly the need for keeping a camera steady while filming, as mentioned in a previous feature, this clip shows the impact of lights, red filter, and finally use of white balance to get the best colour balanced image.
Video >>> Here

All rules are only guidelines, and are meant to be broken! In the first part of the clip, the screen is divided horizontally not into thirds but in half. The blenny in the bottle is in the lower half, in clear focus, while in the background out of focus the mullet are shoaling. This shot works well with the second, which focuses solely on the bottle in the left-hand sector of the screen; when the blenny pops out it does so in centre screen.

This is a very clear example of the thirds rule. The mantis is in the right-hand third and the fish strays from left to centre screen. Far more interesting than if the mantis had been in centre screen throughout.

https://youtu.be/fdG63odmKjs

A variation on the theme! Camera pans from snake eel in bottom right corner to bottom left with action also going on behind, before focusing on a centre frame close-up

https://youtu.be/9krV7sgbmlI

Obviously the highlight of the sequence is the close-up shot, but the establishing shot shows the lone orange anemone lost in the bottom left corner of the frame – far more interesting than if it had been dead centre.

Once again the wide shot is far more interesting as framed, with the inimicus in the bottom and right corner showing the vast empty Lembeh sea floor, before moving to the closer full frame shot.
https://youtu.be/aacq9XMHSfY

After an establishing shot of the octopus, this shot illustrates the two rules – the wider shot placing it in the horizontal and vertical thirds sector, and also having a layer of activity behind, so making the shot far more interesting.

https://youtu.be/WZSK5rMpgYM

And a final example of framing in the vertical right hand sector before moving in closer.

https://youtu.be/1-LtO_MjAVM

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Scuba Diving

Thursday, November 19, 2015

Sunday, September 20, 2015

Underwater Photography