Would love your feedback on my UW Shots as a novice with my SeaLife 1400 in Cozumel

[wench]

SET #1 of 2 Sets

This is my first time shooting UW photos. First camera being the SeaLife 1400

No strobe, shooting in Dive mode >25 feet - Blue Water. No adjusted saturation set on my camera or adjusted once I edited them.

The 1400 captured true to life pictures - colors are very accurate.

Please, I welcome the good, the bad and the ugly.

Thanks, wench

---------- Post added March 8th, 2013 at 03:34 PM ----------

SET #2 of 2

Looking forward to your feedback!

Tanks again

wench

 

[brianthediver]

Really good photos, I especially like how you've got the blue of the sea in the background. My only possible suggestion would be to get a bit closer to your subjects, not an easy challenge!

 

[rdowney]

Nice photos! I just bought a 1400 as well for our trip to Cozumel next week so I am happy to see that it is capable of taking good photos with just the built in flash.

How annoying was the focus delay?

Rob

 

[wench]

Nice photos! I just bought a 1400 as well for our trip to Cozumel next week so I am happy to see that it is capable of taking good photos with just the built in flash. How annoying was the focus delay? Rob

Thanks rdowney and brian!

The flash doesn't work UW, you have to rely on the ambient light. The focus delay isn't bad if you're diving reefs with mild currents. We dove San Clemente, Cedral Wall and Palancar Horseshoe solely for this purpose: mild to medium currents... allowing plenty time to set up your shots.

Now Cedral pass, forget it, the currents were ripping, not enough time for me as a new user to set up my shots so I snapped it back on to my BCD until the next dives.

As a new 1400 user, I was skeptical but it surpassed my expectations.

 

[TSandM]

I think, with some judicious cropping, some of these could be quite nice. For example, the one of the school of fish . . . the story there is "wrong way Corrigan", and cropping to put him at one of the focal points makes for a more dramatic photo (I played with it, but I can't figure out a really simple way to show you my results).

Reefscape photos are generally more effective if they have a central focus, either a coral head, fish, or diver. Otherwise, the viewer is looking around the photo trying to figure out what the photographer was trying to show them.

The camera does a fabulous job of capturing the colors -- play around with some cropping to give the pictures a central focus and I think you'll have some nice ones.

 

[TONY CHANEY]

I know my post will not offer advice but, I would love to claim them as my own! Very great work.

 

[wench]

I think, with some judicious cropping, some of these could be quite nice. For example, the one of the school of fish . . . the story there is "wrong way Corrigan", and cropping to put him at one of the focal points makes for a more dramatic photo (I played with it, but I can't figure out a really simple way to show you my results).

Reefscape photos are generally more effective if they have a central focus, either a coral head, fish, or diver. Otherwise, the viewer is looking around the photo trying to figure out what the photographer was trying to show them.

The camera does a fabulous job of capturing the colors -- play around with some cropping to give the pictures a central focus and I think you'll have some nice ones.

Thank you, great advise! I didn't have a lot of time to really work on these pictures as I was in Cozumel when I posted them. But I take what you say to heart and I understand the rule of thirds. Would love to see what you came up with.

Thanks again!

---------- Post added March 9th, 2013 at 09:14 PM ----------

I know my post will not offer advice but, I would love to claim them as my own! Very great work.

Thank you Tony!!

 

[KeithG]

Get closer (as advised by brianthediver) and ignore the impulse and advice of many people to post process to make your photos perfect. Photoshop does not fix broken. Ignore it until you are good enough to need it! I am not there yet.

Take lots of shots. Then on the next dive take more. Then look at them. What could you do better? What did you do wrong? What do you not understand. Why did it go wrong? Ask questions!

Form a plan of picture variations before your next dive, execute the plan, look at the results. Toss the crap. Do not beat yourself up.
Learn on every dive. (or dive trip if you are a slow learner like me...)

I had a great mentor when I started land photography and he beat me up pretty bad. I wanted to get into advanced darkroom stuff and he pointed out that I was clearly incompetent behind the lens.

With his advice I became very happy with my motorsports photo ability and got lots of awesome shots that I am very proud of.

Macro scuba photography has made me very humble. I am still learning. Long way to go to before I become competent. But I use the same learning principles. Make a plan, execute the plan, review, learn, adjust.

Oh: and use the law of large numbers: if you take a very large number of shots, sometimes you will get an awesome keeper. But do not depend on this...

 

[wench]

Here is one diving Palancar Horseshoe

 

[Pillpusher]

Wow, I'm actually quite amazed at the white balance quality just using the blue 25+ setting! Around what depth were most of those taken? And these were without manually setting the WB or using any editing software color correction? (Sorry, I wasn't quite sure what you meant in the original post) I haven't been on a dive trip since SeaLife updated the DC1400's firmware, so I'm hoping this is a result of that.