20 ft reef dive - not shooting raw - filters?

[scubee-do-be-do]

I am going diving with five family members who are all taking a resort course, and doing two 20-25 ft reef dives in Key West. I am an AOW diver - I have an S 95 and two flashes.

What I want to do is shoot some photos - and maybe video of them in their first diving experience. I have not had time )Due to my work), to process some of the raw files I took six months ago! While I'm sure it will be a fun project when I get around to it, I would like to have 'ready to view' pictures on this trip.

This means I will not be shooting raw, and I'm not even sure if I will bring my flashes. They are cumbersome and I'm not doing real high-end photography here.

So here's my question:

#1 If I had to get a filter to use in about 20 to 25 feet of water natural light and I was not using flash, what filter 'magic' or otherwise - would be a good bet to get me some decent pictures?


#2 what camera settings should I use if I did the above?

 

[flareside]

Shoot RAW+JPG and get the best of both worlds. You have a JPG for immediate use and a RAW if you decide to mess with it later.

Use manual white balance and you shouldn't need a filter. Filters reduce the light entering the lens, reducing image quality. If you don't want to mess with manually adjusting the WB, there is always the underwater WB which shouldn't be too far off at 25 feet. (Just be sure you are using "underwater WB" and not "underwater mode", there is a difference and it is best to avoid the latter)

 

[Interceptor121]

1. Depending on where you dive you need either a green or blue water filter. You should ask a dive shop what's the water colour in key west to be sure
2. You then set the camera to RAW+JPEG and use custom white balance, even with a filter

Filters are used mainly in two situations, shooting wide angle in natural light where your subject is too big for your strobe (i.e. a whole wreck) or for video where you don't have RAW the camera compresses anyway so it is much better to adjust the colour with a filter and custom white balance than doing this in postoprocessing

For stills at 20-25 a filter should not be necessary, for video is an advantage however you also need to consider that shooting with a filter is different and you need to understand how to take shots otherwise you end up with hue in your photos or videos

 

[scubee-do-be-do]

Good stuff guys thanks. Need refreshing on how to use manual white balance....what do I do to set it....aim at somethimng and calibrate it. I am going to get a BIG SAD card tomorrow...I think jpeg +RAW takes a lot of room if I am not mistaken.

Did anybody adress lack of flash ?
Any settings I need to do there? adjust ISO ? Thanks for the help!!

 

[farsidefan1]

for non flash shots general guidlines. ISO 100-200, F 6.3 (if bright use F 8), shutter speed 100-200 depending on light and use manual white balance, start here and then adjust as needed. I would take my flash in case you see something under a ledge.

 

[Interceptor121]

If you want to shoot with natural light the camera is actually pretty good even in av and tv mode as long as you set the internal flash to off
At that depth ISO 100 F8 1/125 is your starting point however you can also shoot In av fix the aperture at F8 and let the camera work out shutter speed.
if it is bright and the flash is off the camera will meter properly and select high shutter speed if you point the camera with an upward angle
Bring a white slate with you balancing on your hand is just for desperate situations
If you look my st lucia Flickr set picture 18 is in conditions as you describe and is shot with natural light only (ISO 200 F8 1/125)

 

[danpass]

How are you viewing the pics later?

Canon's DPP software is perfectly suited as a viewer as well, displaying RAW files as easily as it would JPEGs.



Yeah, I'm a big fan of RAW lol

 

[Interceptor121]

Canon DPP software is sufficient as RAW processor but is not an editor you need to export your pictures to something else
DPP also lacks lens correction, and other tools that instead you can find in adobe lightroom for example and is not good for printing
It is however easy to use in order to drop the pictures that you don't want to edit further

 

[danpass]

I mention DPP since it is relatively light on computer resources compared to LR / Aperture.

And the latest DPP does 60% of the editing (more than enough flexibility for most people) that those two others can do, including lens corrections. It will also batch process / resize for JPEG copies.


Then later on, with time, he can take the mostest favoritest RAW shots and go town on them in LR/whatever. But with only JPEGs to work with he won't have that headroom.

There is no necessity to compromise on file quality these days.

 

[Interceptor121]

The lens correction on DPP is only sufficient for the camera on land it is inadequate to correct fisheye lenses in water
As far as the editing is concerned the tab RAW (which is the processing) is adequate the tab RGB and noise reduction are not that good
Either way the camera JPEG processor is ok for most cases so my suggestion is to save RAW and JPEG and then see which pictures are worth reprocessing in RAW
I agree with danpass that space should not be a consideration you can put a 32GB memory card in this camera there is plenty of room to play