Need some quick advice

[MadisonK]

I just bought an A95 and a watertight housing. It's a great setup so far.

I am diving on Sunday on a wreck off of Gloucester, MA in 90' of water. I need advice on the settings to use for taking snapshots of me and my buddy on this wreck.

The camera has an underwater setting. Should I use this setting?

The camera is a 5 megapixel. Should I use the lower resolution settings? Shooting at high resolution might be fruitless.

There is a flash difuser built into the housing that is tethered to the housing and can be removed. Leave it in or take it out?

Any other advice would be much appreciated as I won't be back on this wreck for sometime.

I am a newbie photographer although I have had a Canon G2 for two years that we use all of the time for snapshots. I've read the manual for the A95.

 

[alcina]

I am diving on Sunday on a wreck off of Gloucester, MA in 90' of water. I need advice on the settings to use for taking snapshots of me and my buddy on this wreck.
First, realise that this camera will not get the whole wreck in (not many will without extra lenses and this lens is available for the A95). Second, you will need to be within three or four feet of your subject for the internal flash to be of use.

I would turn off my flash and set manual white balance (take a slate) for these shots (wide wreck, scenery etc). Maybe leave my flash on for the up close "me and my buddy" shots.

I'd turn my flash on again for any "closeups" of parts of the wreck or critters etc.

The camera has an underwater setting. Should I use this setting?
No, use the manual settings and manual white balance when you are more than three or four feet from your subject. The underwater setting might work in some cases, but probably no better than any other "mode" in most instances. Better you choose than the camera. Manual and MWB will give you the best result and give you the best shot at tweaking once on dry land.

The camera is a 5 megapixel. Should I use the lower resolution settings? Shooting at high resolution might be fruitless.
Use the highest quality you can. Memory is cheap. The better the original the better the final. More information will mean you have more room for play in your software.

There is a flash difuser built into the housing that is tethered to the housing and can be removed. Leave it in or take it out?
Leave the diffuser in.

Any other advice would be much appreciated as I won't be back on this wreck for sometime.
Go manual settings. Use the review setting on your camera so it shows you what you've just taken and then you can adjust. If you use the program modes many times the camera will select a shutter that is too slow and you'll get blurry photos because of movement. It may also choose a wide open aperture which doesn't do much for the sharpness of your images usually.

I've read the manual for the A95.
An excellent start. Now before you head out, put the camera in the housing and practice changing settings, setting manual white balance, turning the flash on and off, using the review method etc. You need to know what your camera will do and how to make it do what you want it to do before you hit the water.

Have fun and I look forward to seeing the results. Let us know if you have more questions!

 

[MadisonK]

Wow! Thanks!

However, maybe I need to reread the manual or take a course. I just tried playing with the manual settings and I got a pitch black photo.

I doubt the visibility will be more than 20' and it will be dark down there so I am anticipating shots at no more than 5'. Hopefully something of the wreck will be visible to give some context to the photos.

I'll study the manual and play with those settings tommorrow and hopefully I will get one or two good photos on Sunday.

Any good links you can recommend for digital photography? I have Digital Photography for Dummies which is pretty helpful.

Thanks again!

 

[jonnythan]

One of the problems with automatic modes is slow shutter speed giving you blurry pictures. Try putting the camera in Tv (shutter priority) speed and setting it at 1/30.

edit: This will be the easiest way to get decent pics. Can adjust color later if you wish.

 

[alcina]

Have a look around this forum - both the Canon & Oly sections and the general area. Pretty much most of the advice applies to all systems. And there are a few A95 shooters out there so a search for Canon A might bring up some results, too.

Is your flash on? Make sure it's on. Double check it's intensity. Normally I have to take mine down one click or it will overexpose things too much. If your conditions are really dark, you might try starting on full intensity and then adjust down as needed.

You may have your speed/aperture set so that there isn't enough light getting into the camera and you're getting dark photos. Before you dump them be aware - There is often well more information in a dark shot that you can see...some tweaking in PS might bring it back. It will probably be a little grainy if you do, but it might be salvageable. I delete NOTHING underwater unless it is completely blown out in a ball of white or unless I can see it is totally not focussed. Dark shots and maybe shots all stay on the card until I can have a good look at them on the computer. Even then I rarely toss stuff.

Jim Church's book Essential Guide to Underwater Photography is a must. It isn't about digital, but about good photography no matter the camera system. And book on photography will translate to digital use...most of the changes when using digital are technical and after the image is shot so the basics can be used from film based sources really.

 

[alcina]

One of the problems with automatic modes is slow shutter speed giving you blurry pictures. Try putting the camera in Tv (shutter priority) speed and setting it at 1/30.

edit: This will be the easiest way to get decent pics. Can adjust color later if you wish.

1/30 underwater is going to give motion blur in most instances, IMHO. I would aim for more like 1/100 minimum...you might get away with 1/80 but it's tough. 1/125 works very well for most subjects I've found, but I still use a faster shutter for a lot of things...your shutter will also control your background colour.

 

[jonnythan]

1/30 underwater is going to give motion blur in most instances, IMHO. I would aim for more like 1/100 minimum...you might get away with 1/80 but it's tough. 1/125 works very well for most subjects I've found, but I still use a faster shutter for a lot of things...your shutter will also control your background colour.

Says the person in Australia. This is the Northeast US. There is not enough light for 1/100. 1/30 is a good balance.. you might get away with 1/60 here on a bright sunny day, but it's the dead of winter so we don't really have any of those anymore.

Start at 1/60 if you can and dial it back a little if you have to. Don't need to worry about aperature and iso and all that in this mode.

 

[alcina]

That's totally true...you do have to adjust for whatever lighting conditions you are in, of course.

I would still be worried about motion blur at 1/30, though.

That's one of the magics of digital...dial it in and try it, if it doesn't work, change it. Use Tv or Av or M or P all on the same dive...take the same shot in two or three different modes to see what works.

shoot, review, adjust, shoot, review, adjust repeat as necessary...and always Shoot 'til your fingers bleed

I wouldn't set your ISO more than 100 on the Canon...too much noise from what I have heard if you go higher than that. Again, try and see.

 

[ChrisA]

I have the A80. I'm going to answer this BEFORE I read the other answers.

You could set the white ballance to "under water" but "auto works well. If you are using the flash (and you shoud if the subject is very close. The flash will gve good color.
But you will almost _always_ need to tweek the white balance later with some photo editing software. Try "auto" white balance. Turn the flash off for mors distance subjects else all you will get is backstater

The camera is a 5 megapixel. Should I use the lower resolution settings? Shooting at high resolution might be fruitless.

Always shoot in the highest res setting. Get a 512MB CF card, it willl be hard to fill up.
the higher res. gives you more options when you edit on the computer later

There is a flash difuser built into the housing that is tethered to the housing and can be removed. Leave it in or take it out?

Leave it in. The flash has enogh power for only a fe feet. Defuser softers the light a bit and removes/prevents a bad shadow when doing macros

On the first dive take the EMPTY housing down with you as deep as you can. If it is defective you don't want to loose a camera. Warenty does NOT cover lreplacing the camera.

 

[alcina]

On the first dive take the EMPTY housing down with you as deep as you can. If it is defective you don't want to loose a camera. Warenty does NOT cover lreplacing the camera.

Here's just one of my responses to this common practice & some other commonly asked questions...