First UW Pictures with Canon A95

[Chrissie]

Hi! I just got back from my cruise to the Caribbean. I purchased a Canon A95 and housing especially for this trip. We dove St. Thomas and St. Maarten.

I set the camera up to use the Underwater Scene selection and snapped away! (I filled my memory card up on the St. Thomas trip (172 pics) and used half of it for the St. Maarten trip! (I bring my laptop with me to download between islands).

My pictures didn't come out quite as clear as I expected although I am still pretty happy with them. I know I will get better results if I have a strobe but couldn't quite afford one this time around. I have seen other people's pictures that were supposedly taken without any additions to the camera and they were a lot clearer (less blue/green). What did I do wrong?

Image by Chrissie (Copyright) posted at ScubaGallery

Is there any software program that I can use to enhance them?

Thanks!
Chrissie

 

[verona]

Hi Chrissie - it's great when you see your first efforts, isn't it? You didn't do anything wrong in terms of blue green issues - that is the natural effect in underwater photography, particularly without a strobe. There are lots of programmes you can use to enhance - photoshop elements is very good and quite cheap for what it does. You can also experiment with the white balance setting on your camera. Best advice is to keep experimenting, keep taking pictures and never throw anything away no matter how bad it first looks!

 

[SwimsWithSharks]

Nice first shots! There are several programs out there that allow you to work with photos after the fact. I use Photoshop CS because it has full RAW capabilities. Photoshop Elements 3 has come out which I believe has RAW capabilities. You may not be shooting in a RAW file format now (not even sure if your camera allows it) but if you really get bit hard by this bug, you may want to consider it in the future.

I find that if you are shooting with the internal strobe that your pictures will have more color the closer you can get to them (thus allowing light to get on the subject). Also, one thing that someone told me early on was to try shoot up (rather than down on subjects). When you shoot down, the subject tends to get lost in the bottom.

Nice shots and I hope you two had a wonderful trip. Have fun!

 

[scuba_star]

Nice picture.

I use Photoship 7 with a process called the Mandrake process to correct the color.

You can also try manual white balance with your camera at depth. This also helps remove some of the blue

 

[fimbetth]

I would say do one of the following:

The A95 can do manual whitebalancing, can't it? Try taking a white slate with you Set your white balance on that during your dive. I'm using a Canon S1 and this what made by far the biggest difference for me.

Or take your pictures in rawmode as recommmended before. That will make them bigger sizewise but will allow you to adjust the whitebalance fully during postprocessing.

markus

 

[Chris Bangs]

if you can shoot RAW do it.

RAW is better than manual white balancing because depth/distance plays a big part in the balancing process. in other words you would need to reset your white balance each time you made a considerable change in the distance of the subject. RAW lets you adjust the white balance in post processing.

 

[alcina]

Sounds like you guys had a great time!

I do not think the A95 supports RAW, so for now I am going to assume that you are not going to change cameras for a while.

I used the A70 (and still do) for a long time, and the A20 before that. I didn't have a strobe for a while either. There are a couple of tricks (some already mentioned)

1 - get close. The internal strobe is quite strong on the Canons but still won't give you a lot of benefit over four or so feet in nice water; less in murky water. I leave my camera in macro mode virtually all the time becaue I know I am not going to shoot anything very far away, but I am going to shoot stuff as close as I can focus. Macro mode does not need to be changed if that once in a lifetime thing does swim by too far for a good shot, but one you want anyway just so you have one!

2 - try to get a little lower than your subject. This will separate it from the background more and may also get better light from the surface (you won't be creating a shadow on your subject).

3 - shoot on manual. This will give you more control of your backgrounds and decrease blur associated with slow shutter speeds (the number one problem with shooting P or A mode is the camera chooses a really slow shutter).

4 - get closer. Minimum focus distance is ideal

5 - learn how to set your manual white balance AND play with the preset settings. I haven't used the underwater setting but the main problem with that is that light changes dramatically underwater with depth and your angle to the sun. The camera does not compensate for these changes - it has one underwater wb setting and that's it. So you may find that "cloudy" or "shade" or "auto" actually works better in some situations. Unfortunately, that's hit or miss and keep shooting. Manual white balance is the best solution but remember you do need to recalibrate for almost each shot as the light will be different.

6 - shoot more. I see you said you filled your card which is great. I see a lot of people who don't and I think that's a waste on most dives. BUT are you taking several shots of the same thing (where possible)? One of the best things about digital is you can shoot, review, adjust and reshoot. Repeat as necessary. It would be rare for me to take less than 3 or 4 shots of something I really wanted a good shot of and I will often take more. I adjust my angle and/or my settings and/or my strobe placement. You don't need to think about your strobe, but you can change the angle you are shooting from and your shutter speed/aperture (for instance for a blue background or bump the shutter speed up to like 1/800 or so for a black background). Sometimes those few extra moments are the difference between a hohum photo and a really nice one.

7 - slow down. Unless you simply want snap shots of your dive - and there are times this is a good approach - then you need to take a little more time to approach your subjects, set up your shots and frame the scene you want. It doesn't take as long as it sounds! Many times it is merely stopping finning, setting your arms to minimise movement so you don't scare something and then waiting til it turns towards you so you can take the shot...instead of swimming towards it and popping one off.

HTH

 

[Dee]

alcina and the others pretty much covered it...Welcome to the Digitally Addicted!

 

[Mark Goodchild]

Good first effort!

Try these guides to solve some issues. If I'd have known these things my first efforts would have been better. If you don't want to use a strobe. I find it gets in the way then you can use a red correction filter. I used one in Egypt and the results were much better. Not professional by a long way but better than just snaps.

http://www.zerovisibility.co.uk/photography.htm

http://www.zerovisibility.co.uk/Digital.htm

Hope this is of some help.

 

[OliverW]

Is there any software program that I can use to enhance them?

Your A95 install CD included Arcsoft Photoimpression software. Its not very customizable but under the enhance tab it does allow you to do some stuff. The best feature is its "see variations" tab which will automatically generate 9 constrast/color enhancements and you select the best. Its not the best for the task, but it should help until you scale up to something like the Gimp.