I thought this was going to be EASY!!

[Pez7378]

So, I bought my first underwater camera. Canon's A640 and WPDC-8 housing just had to be mine. Not sure why, other than I already have an S3 IS and love it. Well, my only other underwater camera experience is my friends Casio EX-Z1000 with housing. It is easy to use and he says he just sets it on auto everything and voila! instant, fantastic underwater photos. I tried it and it works. Natural colors, good crisp images, great lighting etc. No strobe. So when I got my camera I thought Yeah! this is going to be a snap! WRONG. So I followed some of the advice I gathered here and set the camera to manual mode, set the ISO to 400, set the light balance to the underwater setting, adjusted the aperture? to 5.6 or so. and the shutter speed was set to around 1/125. Oh and the flash was set at about 2/3 strength. Everything was either too dark or too light. Now as you can see, I'm in the north west and the water was pretty murky (10-15 foot vis) but the sun was out so there was more than the usual amount of natural light. Someone please give me some tips, I really suck at this and I just want to take average pictures....................that people can look at and say Oh what a neat fish instead of Hmmmm, and what is this here?

 

[Warren_L]

There could be a number of things that may be causing your exposures to be off. It might help if you post a few samples - it may be easier to figure out what's going on if we can see some of the results. In general, with digital, you should be able to review and adjust as you go. But remember to change one thing at a time. If your shots are too bright, try adjusting the shutter speed faster or close the aperature a bit. Do the opposite if too dark. But remember to change one thing at a time so that you get a feel for what kind of effect your adjustments are having.

 

[scottg541]

Pez,

I have a similar set up... and am also a rank amateur...here's what i've learned

try it first in shallow water without the flash, put it in "P" mode and white balance at depth... hold steady, in somewhat murky water shutter speed may only be 1/20... many of the pics on my flickr site are with natural light, haven't mastered my cheap strobe, but found the onboard flash useless.

don't bother white balancing underwater if you're using a flash... consider buying el cheapo strobe if you want decent pics in dark water... when you do, you will have to be in "M" mode.

it's hard to get one universal setting to expect to snap great photo's despite what you are doing otherwise on your dive... try making a few dives only to take photo's to get it dialed in closer...

The set up you have is a good one, but requires learning... after 50 dives with mine i'm just barely comfortable taking decent "snapshots" when oppurtunity presents itself.

and by the way, it is hard, that's why you'll be proud of your photo's when it comes together

Scott

 

[scottg541]

Also, the S3-IS would be an awesome underwater camera, i had an S1-IS that i flooded after a handful of dives (user error)... it's larger lens brought in much more light and allowed quicker shutter speeds.

you would be stuck though, dropping 650 on the ikelite housing.

 

[Pez7378]

Thank you both, I appreciate the feedback and advice. Anyone else is free to comment. Warren, you are right of course, Im sure It would help if I could manage to share my results. I will try to post some results as I go along and learn.

 

[Pez7378]

Here are two that worked out

Well, I really should be showing the lousy pics if I'm going to learn anything here. These were taken on Auto Settings in relatively shallow water so there was some natural light and I was pleased with the results. You can still see how dark the lower right corner is though. How do I compensate for that??




I was very excited about the photos of a Puget Sound King Crab Until I reviewed them and saw they were a bit fuzzy...... This was the first attempt and it got much worse from there.

 

[Warren_L]

The fall-off in light on the lower right of the first two shots is normal - you can't really expect that your subject lighting from your flash will be effective too far out. In a situation like that where the background is further back and there's little ambient light, a flash will not really solve the problem with the background. Having an external flash might help, but on a single flash setup, if you turn up the output, your subject could get blown out. The only thing you can really do is to slow the shutter a bit. Your shot was taken at 1/60 sec, if you slow it down to 1/30 sec you double the ambient light, or even 1/15 sec you have 4 times the ambient light. The last pic looks like a focusing problem - having a focusing light might assist the camera with autofocus.

 

[scottg541]

Pez,

As Warren said, and i have found with a similar camera...

Focus light (as simple as a dive light pointed at subject) will solve most of the focus problem.

Strobe will be the only useful solution to the fall off light problem.

using natural light will present different problems.

Scott