First time with UW Camera, how did I do?

[gerardnealon]

ok, here are two of them... they came out decent.

 

[SeaYoda]

Check out Calypsonick's gallery for proof of how good you can do without a strobe. Without a strobe you do have some other options.

With your 5060 you should have the ability to use white balance for shots that are farther than your internal flash can reach. There are several good threads on white balance that you can do a search and find. I believe Gilligan has an article about white balance somewhere.

Shooting in RAW mode will enable you to correct blues in your pictures, if you have the right editing software. Blues can be touched up for other modes with a good photo editing software. There are several threads about RAW on the board and the Digital Darkroom forum is a great place to ask editing questions.

 

[Kim]

Basically your blues are a water thing. Water absorbes light quite quickly, starting with the reds and continuing through the spectrum. If you are a bit deep most of the red/orange/yellow has been filtered out of the light, leaving just the blue end - so the picture looks blue. Setting your white balance at the depth you are going to shoot can help that - if the camera knows that something is supposed to be white, and it knows how much of each color should be in white, it can compensate quite a bit.
A strobe is better - you have your own full spectrum light in the strobe so all the colors become visible again - but you are right, they are a bit more money.

The above advice to get closer is good as it allows your internal flash to work more effectively without too much problem with back scatter (reflections of the flash off particles in the water). Another solution to get better colors is to try to take your pictures quite shallow where less of the natural color of sunlight is filtered out

In terms of composition - it can be harder to achieve, but fish look better if you can take them swimming towards you - rather than away. You have to have good skills and a lot of patience so that they are not scared and allow you to slowly get close. Sometimes it's worth waiting in one place for several minutes and as still as possible for a fish that you want to photograph to swim at you the right way. Fish are naturally curious, so they generally will come to check you out if they don't feel threatened.

 

[RTodd]

ok, here are two of them... they came out decent.

I uploaded a few pics in my gallery if you want to see the difference with a strobe. These are just "okay" but show you untouched pics using a simple point and shoot digital (cannon s500) and give you an idea of how much a single strobe (S&S YS90DX) and wide angle lens (on the non-macro stuff) can help.

 

[gerardnealon]

SeaYoda and Kim,

Thank you very much for your advice. I am going to check out those forms and play around with the white balance setting. I was not shooting in raw mode because I wanted to save some memory. But since I have a 1.5GB, I guess I really didnt have to Thanks again.

 

[gerardnealon]

I uploaded a few pics in my gallery if you want to see the difference with a strobe. These are just "okay" but show you untouched pics using a simple point and shoot digital (cannon s500) and give you an idea of how much a single strobe (S&S YS90DX) and wide angle lens (on the non-macro stuff) can help.

Wow, you have a lot of color in your pictures. I can see how a strobe makes all the difference in the world. The "Swimthrough" picture, was that w/o the macro lense and w/ the strobe? Thanks for taking the time to post those pictures.

 

[RTodd]

Wow, you have a lot of color in your pictures. I can see how a strobe makes all the difference in the world. The "Swimthrough" picture, was that w/o the macro lense and w/ the strobe? Thanks for taking the time to post those pictures.

I think you are confusing macro again. Digital cameras don't really need the macro lenses that are used on traditional 35mms. That was with the wide angle lens. Just about all of those pics had a wide angle lense on them. I think I even forgot and left it on in the pic of the splendid toadfish, but don't remember. I was probably 1-3 feet away from the diver when I took the swimthrough pictue. If you really want to start spending money, that pic demonstrates why you need two strobes to properly light the whole field of view (more light on the left where strobe is mounted) and how a third on the diver's tank would have lit the background better.

As others have said, staying shallow will help too. Most of the open water pics are around 90-110' and would have looked completely blue without a strobe.

 

[gerardnealon]

I think you are confusing macro again. Digital cameras don't really need the macro lenses that are used on traditional 35mms. That was with the wide angle lens. Just about all of those pics had a wide angle lense on them. I think I even forgot and left it on in the pic of the splendid toadfish, but don't remember. I was probably 1-3 feet away from the diver when I took the swimthrough pictue. If you really want to start spending money, that pic demonstrates why you need two strobes to properly light the whole field of view (more light on the left where strobe is mounted) and how a third on the diver's tank would have lit the background better.

As others have said, staying shallow will help too. Most of the open water pics are around 90-110' and would have looked completely blue without a strobe.

ahh ok, I thought there was a macro lense. So it must be the setting I am thinking about on my camera that focuses well in a really short distance but doesnt in a long distance. Thats for the clarification.

 

[ScubaJoel]

ahh ok, I thought there was a macro lense. So it must be the setting I am thinking about on my camera that focuses well in a really short distance but doesnt in a long distance. Thats for the clarification.

Right - but considering it was without flash, its a nice shoot anyway.

Since I used a 5050z before I can tell this settings works fine with the 5060wz as well (My mode 4). For use with internal strobe set the other My Modes with different F-rates and play around with them a bit. F.e. if you want to keep out scatter from ambient light (and how you called it? blue tint?) use a higher F-Stop-number. But as others said before: you have to go closer with the strobe.

You might prove my first attempts with 5050z and internal strobe.

 

[gerardnealon]

Right - but considering it was without flash, its a nice shoot anyway.

Since I used a 5050z before I can tell this settings works fine with the 5060wz as well (My mode 4). For use with internal strobe set the other My Modes with different F-rates and play around with them a bit. F.e. if you want to keep out scatter from ambient light (and how you called it? blue tint?) use a higher F-Stop-number. But as others said before: you have to go closer with the strobe.

You might prove my first attempts with 5050z and internal strobe.

Thanks for that settings link, I am going to play around with some of their examples.