Lights with P&S cameras

[fjpatrum]

I've been using some cheapo point and shoot camera for snorkeling and so far I get varying quality pictures. This is not a P&S with a housing but a camera designed to be taken down to about 60' (can't remember the brand) so it's not a great camera but it helps me share the memories with friends and family.

I've gotten some really good shots that show real colors instead of the "all blue" pictures and I can only guess that those were because of better lighting.

I'm a beginner diver and I don't think I'm ready for real underwater photography, yet, but I'm wondering if you folks have found any benefit to using lights with P&S style cameras. Whether hand-held or external lights attached to the camera body. Primarily I'll be shooting while snorkeling but I may want to attempt a couple of shots while actually diving before I'm actually ready for a decent photography setup.

Any recommendations on getting the best quality photos I can from a simple P&S camera?

EDIT: I did some research and found that I am using this sealife camera (and I have the optional wide angle lens as well):
SeaLife Cameras - Underwater Digital Camera - Reefmaster Mini

It looks like they have an external flash and my "blue" pictures are primarily due to the fact that my flash wasn't going off in most of my pictures. Any recommendations on how to fix this? Anyone have experience with this and getting the external (or internal) flash to work even in "bright" conditions?

 

[hammerhead man]

You are wise to concentrate on getting your diving skills honed before venturing into underwater photography. One important skill to master is buoyancy. You need to learn to stay in one place while composing your shot and that can only be accomplished with excellent buoyancy skills. Another suggestion I have is taking a few underwater photography courses or reading a couple of books on the subject. I took the PADI course and a couple of online courses that provided a wealth of information on how to take quality photos. A couple of reasonably priced online courses can be found at this web site: Underwater Photography Classes: Improve your underwater photos and digital underwater photography. I took the Introduction to Digital Underwater Photography and the Digital Workflow & Image Manipulation for Underwater Photography courses and found them to be excellent.

Another good source is Scott Gietler's underwater photography guide: Chapter Index - Guide to Underwater Photography|Underwater Photography Guide. It is free and contains a wealth of information.

Regarding your flash problems, I would suggest that you post a thread on the sealife camera forum that can be found above this forum. A flash is a must if you want to capture the colors of the reef and fish.

Regards,

Bill

 

[MXGratefulDiver]

External strobes can help, because they provide artificial lighting at greater ranges than your camera's internal flash. However, keep in mind what's causing the blue ... namely that water filters out colors ... and as the distance between camera and subject lengthens, blue is the last color to get filtered out. So the farther from your subject you are, the more you rely on ambient light and the more blue your picture turns out to be. There are filtering strategies used in many cameras that can help compensate for this effect, but none to completely eliminate it ... particularly with point-n-shoot cameras.

That said ... the difference between a good picture and a great picture will usually boil down to how well you can position and hold yourself steady to take the picture you see in your mind's eye ... so your strategy to improve your diving skills first, then your photography skills is a good one.

... Bob (Grateful Diver)

 

[fjpatrum]

Thanks for the comments. I'm definitely not expecting to be able to take good pics while diving for a while, but I'm hopeful that I'll get there eventually.

 

[Larry C]

SeaLife makes a dedicated strobe set-up for their camera. I know people who use the Reefmaster Mini with the SeaLife strobe and have taken very decent pictures with it. Macro performance is surprisingly good.
Here is one from a Scubaboard sponsor. Many local dive shops and other outlets carry them as well. You can also use other brands of digital slave strobes with your Reefmaster mini.
Buy Sealife digital pro flash SL961 with reviews at scuba.com