Any tips on shooting Black Water dive in Hawaii?

[bvanant]

OWT = Oceanic White Tip Shark.

I personally would be looking at the 60mm Macro (or your 50mm??) with a good focusing light with possibly a red filter. If you can get your hands on a Light & Motion Sola600 they are awesome little light. perfect for your needs.

I would shoot on AF over manual. As the macro lens should focus really quick anyway if you have a good focusing light.

Regards Mark

We just did two of those dives with Jack's. You really don't want to use autofocus with the 60 macro lens. Most of the things you will shoot are a few mm to a few cm in size. Set your 60 macro lens to focus about 4 to 5 inches from the port. Get as many focus lights as you can on your housing and have them meet at your focus point. Shoot your strobes at full power (I used two Z240s and sometimes wanted more power) at f16 and 1/160 or so. Move the camera to get focus. I shot this dive with the 7D and the 60 macro lens and tried autofocus and it sucked. Not enough contrast at all to get most shots. You don't have lots of time since you are tethered to the boat.
The only other option to shoot this is to put a 1.4 tele on the tokina 10-17 and shoot it at the 17 end with a tiny dome port. You can get the shot but it will be small in the frame.

Bill

 

[bvanant]

Red Filter or Red LED is for the focusing light so you dont scare away the critters.

Regards Mark

Most of the things you shoot on this dive can't tell white from red light and you can't scare them. To get to see them at all use as much light as you can. I used two sola 600 and two Inon Z240 focus assist lights and often wished for more light to get the focus on the critters.
Bill

 

[AussieByron]

Most of the things you shoot on this dive can't tell white from red light and you can't scare them. To get to see them at all use as much light as you can. I used two sola 600 and two Inon Z240 focus assist lights and often wished for more light to get the focus on the critters.
Bill

Interesting to know Bill. Using two Sola600's and still not enough light to Focus? Maybe unbolt a search light off the rescue helicopter next time.

Do you have any shots from your dive to shows us?

Regards Mark

 

[Heymo]

Yes, Bill- could you share a few of your pictures?

There is no Tokina 10-17 that works with a 50D, just 40D and under. I'd love to have one...

Need to work with what I have. I do have a focus light I can attach to the top of my housing, will use that plus the focus lights on my strobes.

Thanks again!

 

[dhaas]

Heymo,

Tokina 10-17mm Fisheye lens for Canon mount will fit ANY Canon digital SLR EXCEPT 5D MK II 5D and other Canon FULL FRAME sensor models.

It will fit your 50D.

What Bill is talking about is some shooters put a teleconverter (Kenko PRO 300 1.4X is popular) behind this lens on their camera body.

This pushes OUT the Fisheye lens a bit more making it "see" a bit narrower angle but still maintaining super close focus and edge to edge sharpness abilities.

Sounds like a preset focus point as Bill related of only 4" - 5" is best.

We used to shoot manual focus SLR cameras back in the day like this. Pre-focus and then physically move your body in and out to fine tune it.

Or leave your lens on AF and do the LOCKING method I described previously.

We do this on night snorkels in the Bahamas with dolphins coming up from 800' of water. Stick your fin out and get a focus lock using the * button programmed or the AF On (on Canon cameras.)

You could even do this on the boat but if you haven't practiced this method above water it could all go kablooey in the dark, bouncing boat, deep water, nervous about sharks, blah blah blah......

Depending on your # of dives I would go with Bill's recommendations and just lock your lens at 4" , seal the housing making sure the lens is on MANUAL focus and can't be bumped and dive.......

Josh's photos are amazing and his EXIF data is great to go to school on.....

Good shooting!

dhaas

 

[bvanant]

Interesting to know Bill. Using two Sola600's and still not enough light to Focus? Maybe unbolt a search light off the rescue helicopter next time.

Do you have any shots from your dive to shows us?

Regards Mark

I could focus all right if the beasties got close enough but compared to my wife's 2 x 1200 lights the 2x600 was not nearly as nice. I will post some pics from the dive tomorrow.
Bill

 

[bvanant]

Here are some pics. Not the greatest but I haven't looked at all of them yet.

You notice on the last one that the actual focus point is a bit behind the surface of the pyrosome but being clear and at night it is tough to get focus where you really want it.
Bill

 

[Heymo]

Thanks for posting the pictures, Bill! Will be sure to post when we get back...