Brand new to water photography

[Alan Harbord]

Whilst I've been a land photographer for years, I'm completely new to U/W photography and am finding it really interesting seeing all the new terms which mean very little to me - But I'm learning really fast!

I use the EOS 1D as well as a Hasselblad but have made the decision to resist investing heavily on housings at this stage as the Ikelite one for the Blad is upwards of £6000 without all the bits! So I've just taken delivery of a Canon G12 with Canon underwater housing, in order to 'dip my toe in the water' as such, and to try and learn the basics of U/W photography without huge investment at this stage.

I guess my main confusion at this stage is underwater flash. One thing I have learned from the forums is that power is important and powerful strobes cost a lot of money. I already have several high end Speedlites and in all my ignorance am wondering why can't just put them in clear underwater boxes and enjoy powerful U/W flash? I guess there must be a reason otherwise it would be more popular. Has anyone else done this? Triggering is easy as a simple radio trigger could be used. I'm quite happy to spend a bit of time in the workshop engineering something, but have I missed something here?

 

[pooley]

Subal have their own units, as do Olympus, but if you search hard enough, you should be able to get a setup without the mither of engineering your own radio trigger. Before you get too involved, have a look at the epoque 230DS - not the most desirable, but reasonable power, and can be bought in England for around £245 including tray, arm and fibre optic cable

 

[Wisnu]

10bar manufacture UWhousing for various land flash including the speedlites - probably the cheapest among other housing (approx. USD 450) , the quality is hit and miss. If not lucky (like mine, all the control buttons except power does not work), don't expect they will respnse you. Mine is Metz 58AF-1 - very bulky.
Sea&Sea YS-01 or YS-02 is good quality strobe at very reasonable cost; much cheaper than the 10bar housing.
I also have epoque ES-230DS, Inon D2000, YS-01 - Inon D2000 is the best among four.

 

[herman]

Welcome to the board.
I am going to take you in a different direction. I am assuming your profile is correct. Before you even start considering UW camera gear, learn to dive. Now, by that I don't mean just getting certified, which is really your learners permit but rather become skilled as a diver first. UW photography reguires that your dive skills are spot on and instinctive rather than something you have to think about doing. These skills are not perfected overnight and certainly not in your basic dive class. Instead of jumping into gear, spend some time and money just diving and in more instruction. Perfect your buoyancy skills and get comfortable underwater before you grab a camera. You will be safer, your photos will be better and the reef will be better off as well.

 

[bvanant]

I agree with the advice to perfect your diving first. Then you can look at your speedlites in a housing but they are expensive and ginormous and you will need to use funky 6-pin (for canon) electrical sync. Radio triggers don't really work underwater so that is not an option. For the price of a strobe housing you can pick up strobes that will be perfectly suitable to your G12
Bill

 

[Alan Harbord]

Thanks all for the replies - really good advice; particularly Herman "lean to dive first", you are so right! I guess my enthusiasm for photography is driving me.

My plan when I bought the G12 was to try it out this month in shallow waters with no dive gear (may snorkel etc). I'm in Cyprus anyway so I'll dip my toe in the water then.

Then later on in the year all being well, and if I like it I'd like to turn towards scuba and let things go from there.

I guess at this (very humble) stage I'm interested in taking a few breaths (literally) and trying it out for photography sake. As everyone says that you absolutely have to have flash, I started thinking along those lines.

One thing that I didn't make clear in my original message was that I don't want to invest at this stage on any more U/W gear and when I talked about a housing, I literally meant a box! I've noticed you can buy boxes rated to 60m for £15. I thought I could stick a speedlite in and make it work.
Bvanant, your comment about radio triggers not working U/W. Is that right? Even a Pocket Wizard which uses digital rf?

 

[herman]

I totally understand the excitement but you have to learn to drive before entering the Grand Prix race.

Strobes are definitely important for UW photography but with skill and good shot selection, great shots can still be done with just the internal flash but then again even with a strobe you will still need to learn to compose a shot. Some things to consider that may not be obvious to a topside shooter are strobes- even the most powerful ones- are limited to a few feet, 8 to 10 max. So pretty much all your work will be 8 feet or less from your subject, sometimes at distances of less than an inch. In the UW world, telephoto is not nearly as useful as it is on land, in UW photography, your fins are your zoom and tripods are rarely an option. This is where you skill really starts to come into play. Holding a camera within less than an inch of your subject, keeping it in frame and in focus- your depth of field is often less than an inch- is not for a novice.

I have an "are you ready for a camera test" that I like budding UW photographers to try, when you can do it, you are ready to start thinking about the camera...
In a pool or other safe dive site where crashing into something is not a problem, pick a small object that is located in mid water, pretty much anything will work, a tile on a pool wall, a nail in a pier, snail on a rock , any small, indestructible object is fine as long as you have at least 3 or 4 feet of water above and below you. While floating horizontal and neutrally buoyant from 5 or 6 feet away, hold both of your hands out in front of you at arms length and form a box with your thumbs and index fingers- this is your viewfinder. Looking through your viewfinder, gently swim up to your object. Get within 6 inches of the object, keeping it framed in your finger viewfinder at all times, then hold it in frame for at lest 30 seconds- you are focusing and composing the shot. After 30 seconds or so back away from your subject, turn and swim away. Remember you can not use your hands, they are holding your "camera" and you can't go up, down, forward or backward more than an inch or 2 for the 30 second focus and compose time and your fins can not drop to the bottom- kicking or standing on a reef is really bad form. When you can do that easily, your skills are up to the task of a camera. This is not something you can do with a few dives, it takes a good bit of practice.

Water attenuates RF energy very fast, RF triggers might work underwater but are very limited distances, much less than on land and then not reliably. I would not spend any money trying them unless you just like to play with that sort of thing. There is a good reason that Ikelite and others have not gone the RF route.

 

[Alan Harbord]

Thanks again Herman for the useful advice. One thing that I didn't mention at the beginning is that my motivation is not to photograph marine life and underwater scenes. As a longstanding fashion photographer I am interested in underwater fashion photography. I have seen the work of several fashion togs who specialise in U/W and how they have achieved their work. At the mo it's just a personal project.

I get the 8 foot limit and I guess it depends heavily on water quality. Obviously with fashion there's are many different things to deal with. Eventually you end up with a whole team of specialists, a mass of props, etc etc.

So at this initial stage with my humble G12 I am just reletively speaking 'mucking about', but still want the very best from my efforts (like on my land shoots), hence the interest in one or two speedlites. My rf sync land devices go to 500m so I wonder if they will work to 5 feet underwater? Is there an equation for attenuation as a function of distance in water of a given depth? Again I'm not investing at this stage so just want to use anythign I've got with the help of a £15 U/W box.
Your 'are you ready ... " test does bring home the difference when shooting U/W well. I'm looking forward to having a splash in Cyprus!

 

[herman]

They might work, to some extent it will depend on the operating freg, if they are way up in the spectrum it's unlikely they will go far, be interesting to try- I have a backgound in RF... I seriously doubt more than a few feet UW and much less in salt vs fresh.
Shooting UW, even if the shot that "looks" far way usually are not, esp if they are well lit. What looks like a distance shot UW is most likely a closeup shot with a wide angle lens. In UW photography, getting close with wide angle lens is the way it's done as opposed to lots of strobes and more distance on land. Before big strobes, you need to consider a wide angle lens.

 

[Alan Harbord]

Well that's a coincidence, I too have an rf background, mainly in EMC, my specialty being radiated rf emissions between 30 and 1000 MHz. Despite all this I know nothing about rf propagation underwater! I guess the waveform is constantly 'shorted' by the conductive sea water.

I see the need for getting close and hence wide angle. However wide goes against many principles of shooting people, especially fashion. I tend to use a 120mm (medium format) or 85mm lens on 35mm cameras. I guess for many shot types I'd crop closer - much of fashion isn't full length anyway. Wider is something I'll have to accept though.

Coming back down to earth though my first test will be with the G12 in a few weeks. Pool first then sea. All within 2m depth. Humble beginnings but am looking forward to trying something new.