Diving with sharks and the Olympus E-PL1

[ggibson]

I recently picked up the E-PL1+housing combo and had a chance to try it out in Grand Bahama. The results were great, so I thought I would share a few. I don't have a strobe, so these were all taken without flash. It's nice to finally shoot in RAW underwater though!

For the shots below I used my 9-18mm under the standard flat port, and I'm quite happy with the results. The Zen port would be nice, but even with the flat port this lens gave me substantially wider FOV than the standard 14-42mm. Link to the set:

Grand Bahamas Diving 2013 - a set on Flickr

 

[MadBeaverDK]

Very nice.

 

[YankBoffin]

Gorgeous! I'm headed to the Bahamas in May and just got an EPL1 (though with the kit lens). Hope I can get shots half that nice!

 

[ggibson]

Thanks for the comments, everyone! I also just completed a video compilation of some clips I took. If you're interested, take a look:

Shark Junction - Grand Bahama 2013 on Vimeo

 

[jameseg]

Beautiful shots, ggibson! I know you were fairly shallow, but still, how did you get so much light in those photos and while still keeping the sharks from blurring? Can you share camera settings?

James

 

[ggibson]

It was about 45ft deep, so yes fairly shallow, and the dive was around 3pm in the afternoon when the sun was relatively high in the sky. It also helped that I was shooting wide angle and these sharks were coming so close!

For my camera settings, I shot RAW, Auto white-balance, in A-mode with aperture set between f4.0 and f6.3. That gave me enough light (surprisingly), and the camera selected ISO200 most of the time. Shooting RAW was critical and being able to adjust the WB later changed the look of these completely (see the video for an uncorrected look, since that is impossible to shoot RAW with an E-PL1).

 

[R-balljunkie]

excellent pics. ive been thoroughly impressed with the camera. have you thought of setting the WB manually while under water? i sometimes do this.

 

[ggibson]

Thanks! I was thinking I should set WB manually for better video colors. I didn't play with it though, since I wasn't confident that I could get settings I liked easily, and I wanted to focus my attention on the experience as much as possible. Once I have some more practice and time to dive with this setup, I'll try out the manual WB.

 

[KevWind]

It was about 45ft deep, so yes fairly shallow, and the dive was around 3pm in the afternoon when the sun was relatively high in the sky. It also helped that I was shooting wide angle and these sharks were coming so close!

For my camera settings, I shot RAW, Auto white-balance, in A-mode with aperture set between f4.0 and f6.3. That gave me enough light (surprisingly), and the camera selected ISO200 most of the time. Shooting RAW was critical and being able to adjust the WB later changed the look of these completely (see the video for an uncorrected look, since that is impossible to shoot RAW with an E-PL1).

Nice Pics How ( what software) did you correct WB later ?

 

[deeper thoughts]

nice..