All posts filed under: Underwater

Pygmy Seahorse, Okinawa

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The pygmy seahorse was one of the top species on my underwater Okinawa shot list. Very happy to have managed to photograph one this morning. The seahorses are tiny, about the size of my thumbnail. They are also fantastically well camouflaged, blending perfectly with the fan corals they live on. Wikipedia states that the species was only discovered when researches were studying the fan corals in the lab.

Every Underwater Photographer a Diver

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Perhaps the most famous of the United States Marine Corps’ mantras is “every Marine a rifleman”. It doesn’t matter what specialization you go into, each marine must still undertake regular training and assessment in their ability to fire a rifle. I mention this as there should be a similar mantra with regards to scuba: every underwater photographer a diver. The key issue is that if you’re an experienced diver and an inexperienced photographer, you may get mediocre shots, but you’ll dive safely and within your limits. If you’re an experienced photographer and an inexperienced diver, you can quite easily, and very quickly, find yourself in serious trouble. An SLR camera in a housing is large, heavy, bulky, expensive and demands your concentration. Add strobes and you’ve just magnified all these factors. If you are having any issues with your diving – buoyancy, navigation, exhaustion, air management, decompression etc then the camera is only going to make things worse. Spend too much time looking through your viewfinder and not enough time checking your gauges and you …

Let there be underwater light (Part 2)

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Here are some shots from the first dive with the strobes. The lens used was a 50mm macro (which due to the crop factor on the K5 means it’s the equivalent of a 75mm lens on a 35mm camera). The strobes mean macro shots will be a lot sharper. This is partly because the flash sync shutter speed of 1/180 maybe quicker than the shutter speed used without strobes, but mostly it is because  it is the much faster flash duration that actually freezes the action. The result is that you can make out the teeth of the grumpy anemone fish, which otherwise would have been just a blur. The bright modeling light of the DS-161 strobe is a great help allowing the camera to autofocus more easily. The operative word  here is more, as getting it to lock onto a fish as it whooshes by is always going to be tricky. That’s why you’re going to be seeing a lot of photos of fish that either don’t move much (see below) or tend to …

Let there be underwater light (Part 1)

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A you descend beneath the ocean’s surface things become darker and bluer. Light is absorbed by the water and it does this to a greater extent at the red end of the color spectrum. When shooting in the shallows you can capture the vibrant colors of the reef, but sink a little further and your images will look a little green and possibly blurry from slow shutter speeds (or noisy from high ISOs). The solution is to shed a little light on your subject. Send in the strobes. I bought two used Ikelite strobes on Ebay (thank you Vadim in Australia). One is a powerful DS-161 strobe that has a 3W modeling light, and the other is a far less powerful (and much cheaper) DS-51 strobe that I use as fill. The above image is a pre-dive test in the bath, which showed that both strobes worked, and that the light from the modeling light allows the camera to autofocus on the subject. The strobes are positioned in this image for macro shooting. The lens …

Underwater Leak Detector

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One of the major issues with underwater photography is the possibility of flooding the housing with water and damaging the camera. I believe the majority of cases of flooding don’t occur due to some catastrophic failure of the housing (crumpling under the pressure) but rather an imperfect o ring seal due to a spec of dirt or a hair. In these cases water may trickle rather than surge inside the housing. If you’re busy checking your gauges, or you’re diving at night you may not notice the water until it’s too late. Some housings come with a built in leak detector, but for those that don’t, a quick visit to UWleakdetectors.com is a good idea. For 36 dollars you get a little bit of circuitry, velcro and some blue tack that may just save your equipment from a dunking. With regards to my housing I checked with Ikelite and it turns out that there is a control on the housing that allows you to press the lens release button. Now this has been pointed out …

Ikelite K5 Housing – Open Water Test

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Tested out the underwater housing for the K5 at Cape Maeda this morning. Hiroshi and Shawn were my buddies for the dive. As more experienced underwater shooters, they could make sure that I’d sealed everything down properly. So what did I learn? The housing didn’t leak and you can operate all buttons while underwater. There also appears to be a button (labeled Fn Button in the manual) that allows you to press the lens release button. I may contact Ikelite to see if I’m just being dimwitted or if this is some design issue. (I didn’t try to use this while underwater.) Operating functions that require doing two things at the same time are tricky e.g. pressing the ISO button and turning the rear e-dial. This means using exposure compensation underwater will be more problematic than simply using manual mode and adjusting exposure with the e-dials. The controller for the “Green Button” can easily get stuck. Probably not an issue as I don’t use the Green Button normally, but strange nonetheless. Live View is useful …