Afternoon all,
I'm looking at beginning in the world of photography underwater, and thinking about where to start. I've had a look around at different things, and I seem to have a slightly unusual spec I'm working to, which makes things get expensive real quick, which isn't necessarily a problem but some element of future proofing would be prudent.
I'm not naturally a picture type person, my friends joke how I can be wordy and can tell which bulletins I write at work. I've recently been doing more projects, and feel like I need more images to support write-ups and presentations, and so a camera seems obvious. Most projects are wreck in UK waters, deeper than 60m and fairly dark. I just don't do much diving shallower than 30m, so buying a different housing to practice with seems wasteful. I've got a GoPro but barely use it, had issues with the official GoPro housing not letting the buttons work deeper than 50m, although it didn't leak. I'd been using cheap Amazon video lights, but they also seem to get flaky below 50m. I've ordered a Carbonarm housing and Kraken 10K lumen video lights as a starting point, but now thinking about a still camera as an option instead.
I'm thinking about something like a Canon R50 or Sony A6xxx series and a housing, but for the depth needed the housings get dear pretty quick. I'm thinking the circa £500-600 budget for camera. I'm not really interested in animals or macro things, it will probably all be bigger wreck feature shots, so I guess a bigger sensor and more pixels will help, and big lights. Photogrammetry is on the cards for some projects. I'm thinking about a surface photo workshop to learn about composing and camera functions, but does this sound like a logical plan? Its probably a post Christmas campaign really, but trying to think about what I need. There seems to be lots on animal and macro photography out there to look at, but far less on wreck photography to look at as a starting point.
Rich
