I am terrible at photography :(

[firstdive2005]

I would like to apologize to Sealife cameras.
Trying the camera in the pool was a waste of time to understand how great it is.

The DC800 is a FANTASTIC camera even an photography challenged person (me) can use.

I went to Puget Sound today and took my first pictures "in the wild" and they are better then I could imagine. What will they look like when I figure it out -- I can't wait.

No strobes just a camera and a fairly new diver.

Thanks Sealife!

My sentiments also.
I do have some great shots, as Dandy Don has exposed they are fluke or lucky pics.
Dandy if you read my earlier post, we Canadians sometimes call manauls instructions. So yes Ive read them, maybe I dont understand them. I do point my strobes away. As the manauls state, as well as the tons of photo help Ive read on line state to do. I have never put any pics through photoshop, I dont know how to do that. I suppose I need to take some lessons to do that also. I need some one on one to figure it out.
So Sealife I am so very happy with what I have done when I dont know what I'm doing. Last night my wife and I had dinner with friends, my bud somehow hooked my laptop to his tv and we had a blast looking at what I had. They looked great on the screen, he even said to 'shop' them. So I will learn. thanks, this thread is very encouraging.

 

[DandyDon]

Dandy if you read my earlier post, we Canadians sometimes call manauls instructions. So yes Ive read them, maybe I dont understand them. I do point my strobes away. As the manauls state, as well as the tons of photo help Ive read on line state to do.

Ok, cool. Some people kinda skim over them like I used to. It helps to actually study them I've learned. Thanks for clarifying.

I have never put any pics through photoshop, I dont know how to do that. I suppose I need to take some lessons to do that also. I need some one on one to figure it out.

I like Adobe - Adobe Photoshop Album Starter Edition 3.2 - a free program, with a choice of Auto Fix or manual "Fix Photo Window." On the latter, you can click one choice, undo, etc - see what brings out the pic best.

What I'll do with a batch is kinda lengthy, lots of easy steps. Try it it out. if you like it, I could explain.

So Sealife I am so very happy with what I have done when I dont know what I'm doing. Last night my wife and I had dinner with friends, my bud somehow hooked my laptop to his tv and we had a blast looking at what I had. They looked great on the screen, he even said to 'shop' them. So I will learn. thanks, this thread is very encouraging.

He used a Serial Cable.

 

[sabbath999]

White balance is something you can often "fix it in post", unlike blur and over exposure. Those are the two things in digital photography you can't miss on and still have a good photo... it has to be reasonably in focus. "Blown out" areas where they are overexposed to white cannot be fixed in digital (unlike back in the film days).

Everything else can basically be fixed to some extent in post processing.

I would recommend concentrating on taking sharp pictures (i.e. having the shutter speed high enough to stop movement) and posting your examples here for us to see. If we see them we can help.

In Photoshop (not Photoshop Elements though) you can use the channel mixer to clean up some photos pretty easily.

If you don't want to shell out the bux for Photoshop, you can do the same thing with FREE GIMP with the FREE channel mixer plugins.

I am not an experienced underwater photographer because I am a new diver, but I have taken literally hundreds of thousands of pictures over the years (I started working as a newspaper photographer in 1984 after graduating with a photojournalism degree in college)... so while I can't tell you the best way to approach a shot underwater, I can at least take a look at your picture and see what is going on from a technical standpoint.

 

[DandyDon]

Sab, I have heard great things about FREE GIMP. Need to give it a try.

On obstacle for posting pics here as attachments is the 400 Kb limit per Jpeg attachment. If member reduces his pics with Microsoft Image Resizer to the Large @ 1024x768, they'll be well under 400 Kb each, but you can still read them - right?

I'll attach an example. What can you tell from this one, please...?

​

I can use Infraview to read the Exif info (I think I had the date wrong on the camera) but dang if I understand it...

ImageDescription - DIGITAL IMAGE
Make - SeaLife
Model - DC500
XResolution - 314
YResolution - 314
ResolutionUnit - Inch
Software - Adobe Photoshop Album Starter Edition 3.2
DateTime - 2008:08:17 16:28:17
YCbCrPositioning - Co-Sited
ExifOffset - 638
CustomRendered - Normal process
ExposureMode - Auto
White Balance - Auto
DigitalZoomRatio - 1.00 x
SceneCaptureType - Standard
GainControl - High gain up
Contrast - Normal
Saturation - Normal
Sharpness - Normal
ExposureTime - 1/64 seconds
FNumber - 2.80
ExposureProgram - Creative program
ISOSpeedRatings - 200
ExifVersion - 0220
DateTimeOriginal - 1957:04:20 16:37:50
DateTimeDigitized - 1957:04:20 16:37:50
ComponentsConfiguration - YCbCr
ExposureBiasValue - 0.00
MaxApertureValue - F 3.14
MeteringMode - Center weighted average
LightSource - Daylight
Flash - Flash fired, auto mode
FocalLength - 5.40 mm
FlashPixVersion - 0100
ColorSpace - sRGB
ExifImageWidth - 1024
ExifImageHeight - 768
FileSource - DSC - Digital still camera

 

[sabbath999]

That's the same EXIF information I can read (I use EXIF Viewer on the Mac).

What I can tell is that you are steady... 1/64th of a second on your shutter speed is not very fast to capture moving action, and everything under the sea is moving With a flash providing most of the light, that works out OK.

ISO was set to 200, which prolly is about as high as you would normally want to go on just about any point & shoot (the higher the ISO, the more noise, especially with the tiny sensors point & shoots have). Still, if the options are blur or noise, always choose noise because that can be fixed in post processing.

Aperture was wide open (which you want for the most ambient light to get in), and you used a flash. Your digital zoom was either not used or turned off (good).

You had your exposure set to AUTO and your white balance set to Auto as well... but what you did was you filled the frame at a very short distance, so that most of the light captured is from your flash. That light is properly white balanced by your AUTO setting. If you had been shooting where everything wasn't on just about the same level, you would have seen a lot of very blue areas to go along with the bright colors (which it is starting to do on the bottom left hand corner).

The flash and white balance did a pretty good job.

Your exposure program was "Creative" which I don't know but can look up when I get the chance to see exactly how that works. Focal length was 5.40, which means that you were shooting your camera as wide open as it would get... that's good because it lets you get closer to the subject which is something you always want to do underwater to eliminate water distortion, backscatter and because water is 600 times more dense than air... that means your flash has an extremely short effective range. From the shadows I would guess (and it is strictly a guess, I can't really tell) that you had an external flash strobe on the camera mounted on the right hand side... but that's just a guess, I could be wrong.

Do you mind if I play with that picture for just a bit in post processing and post the results here?

 

[DandyDon]

Haha very good. Yes, the strobe is on the right site.

Sorry I don't have it in the unedited version; as you can see I shopped it on Elements.

But please do play with it if you'd like to.

 

[sabbath999]

Haha very good. Yes, the strobe is on the right site.

Sorry I don't have it in the unedited version; as you can see I shopped it on Elements.

But please do play with it if you'd like to.

Thanks, I will... not that it needs it, it looks excellent just like it is!

 

[sabbath999]

By DandyDon

This isn't trying to "improve" an already excellent picture, I just like playing with stuff. It is also not off topic because it shows the difference you can make in post processing in about 2 minutes
... this is just an example. Since I didn't take the picture, I have no idea what the scene looked like and I trust that Don's is actually much more accurate since he saw it.

Post processing skills can make up for problems with underexposure and white balance (Neither of which were problems with Don's picture) but it can't help much with blur or blown out whites.

BTW I know that I desaturated the sand too much, I did that as an example of what can be done with virtually no effort. I did this in Nikon's Capture NX, my post processing tool of choice but you can do it in about any app.

 

[DandyDon]

Haha very good. Yes, the strobe is on the right site.

OOops! I was wrong. Haven't actually fired that strobe since July. Got it out later and remembered - the arm bends over from the left on mine, and I usually try to keep the flash directly straight above the camera, then adjusting the controls for amount of flash accepted by the camera - but the arm is flexible and I may well have had it bent further over to the right.

Thanks, I will... not that it needs it, it looks excellent just like it is!

Haha, you're too kind. I'm not shooting for National Geographic or trying to impress anyone who would know quality, just shooting and sharing for fun - so I certainly don't mind my work being referenced as "obviously amateur" for example. But thanks for your kind words.

By DandyDon

This isn't trying to "improve" an already excellent picture, I just like playing with stuff. It is also not off topic because it shows the difference you can make in post processing in about 2 minutes... this is just an example. Since I didn't take the picture, I have no idea what the scene looked like and I trust that Don's is actually much more accurate since he saw it.

Post processing skills can make up for problems with underexposure and white balance (Neither of which were problems with Don's picture) but it can't help much with blur or blown out whites.

BTW I know that I desaturated the sand too much, I did that as an example of what can be done with virtually no effort. I did this in Nikon's Capture NX, my post processing tool of choice but you can do it in about any app.

Looks great. I like how you seemed to deepen the colors so much better.

I'm diving Santa Rosa NM, The Blue Hole, in a few weeks - always a real shooting challenge with the reduced light, overhang shadows, gray wall, sediment stirred up by the AOW classes. I'll post a new thread around March 16 with untouched vs Elements edited pics then; maybe you'd like to play with some of those that week?

BTW, what do you shoot below? Seems like the pro shooters like to use their pro cameras with Ikelite housings. I kinda surprised to see you in the Sealife forum.

 

[sabbath999]

So far all I have shot below is a Canon A710IS with no strobe in a Canon housing. It's what I have.

I will post a few shots one of these days.

I just got certified in September and have only dived with a camera on 4 dives (I wanted to get some buoyancy control going first, eh?)

I bought a dC800 Maxx kit a couple months ago (the drama of that purchase available on another thread) because it is small, fits in one case, and was $1200.

It is enough to get me going.

My answer is in two parts.

Part 1) I am not a good enough diver to spend $5k buying a case for my Nikon D300 and the proper strobes and ports and stuff. By the time I get good enough, the D300 will be obsolete. DSLR cameras have a shelflife around my place of about 18 or so months (my wife's D80 is going on eBay tomorrow to be replaced by a D90).

Part 2) I believe that as long as you own a camera that has a decent lens on it (i.e. one that is reasonably sharp) and that has adequate lights, you can take amazing and fantastic pictures. It is the photographer that takes excellent pictures, not the camera.

Is a DC500, DC600, DC800 or DC1000 ever going to be as fast, versitile, responsive and flexible as a Nikon D300 with a good set of pro lenses in a quality case with a bunch of ports? No, of course not.

However, the real challenge isn't whether the gear is the best money can buy... it is whether the person taking the picture is the best photographer he can be.

I enjoy taking zoo pictures (as you can see on my website), and I get a lot of REALLY strange looks as I am carrying my two cameras that I use around the zoo... one is a Nikon D300 with a $1600 70-200 VR lens on it, and the other one is a Kodak Easyshare Z712IS that I bought on sale from Dell for $99 with a coupon. Some of my very best shots have come from using the Kodak, because it was the proper tool for the job.

Photographers tend to be gear heads. I can honestly say I don't fall into that category. Give me a reasonably sharp lens and some good quality light, and I am happy.