Night photos and cowardly fish

[Coll]

Hi all, I'm going on a night dive in a few days and it will be my first night dive with a camera. I was wondering how you adjust your photo techniques for the dark? I just use a Canon SD630 with an underwater housing, no external strobe. Do you just shine your light on the subject and not use the camera's flash? Please help! Also, in a more general sense, do you guys have any special approaches to skittish fish? I've heard that if you extend your arm with the camera as opposed to getting your whole body closer, the animals tend to be less likely to flee. Any other suggestions you guys have? Thanks!!

 

[Riger]

Hello Coll,

I am only a beginner with underwater photography, here is what I understand.

There is a great advantage to taking pictures at night, because all the light that is being used for the exposure is being generated by your camera's flash. During the day, there is too much natural light and that light is distorted due to the loss of the red side of the spectrum.

To answer your question, use your flash; I am not sure if you have exposure compensation or not, but if you do, learn how to use it. Also, a diffuser will help soften the impact of the flash at shorter distances and also spread the flash more evenly across the frame.

It helps if you (or even better your buddy) are illuminating the subject with a torch so that the camera does not have to hunt for focus, some cameras use a series of flashing light for this (if it is dark) and this can cause the subject to move along.

Hope this helps, good luck and don't forget to share your catch with us.

Best Regards

Richard (Riger)

 

[ScubaSteve]

I too am an amateur at the whole photography thing but can offer the following:

This has already been touched on. You must make sure there is a light shine on your subject to act as a focus light. This allows your camera something that it can "see" and focus on.

This too has already been touched on in a fashion. The diffuser is a very good idea because provides light to the area without actually shining the light directly on whatever is floating in front of you. This helps reduce backscatter as well as helps prevent hotspots of over exposure.

As for the internal flash....external strobes would give you a better picture quality by not lighting up backscatter but you should get some decent photos with flash. The closer you can get to your subject under the circumstances the better. This will help reduce the amount of backscatter.
This is all just an amateurs opinion from my experience and what I have heard. No matter what, share your efforts with us so we can see how you made out.

 

[Coll]

Thanks for the tips guys, I'll be sure to share my results come friday. Another thing I was wondering was, should I have my buddy illuminate the subject with their flashlight from another angle? There are 4 of us diving as a group, is it ok to have a bunch of lights on the subject? If I have one light on it and use my flash, won't it washout my picture?

 

[MauiScubaSteve]

OK, just a couple corrections:

Depending on the camera a focus light is not always needed. With my Oly 5050 you can set the focus to a desired range and then just shoot subjects in that range. This is very easy for old-timers with Nikonus experience. Also, the 5050 does well with it's focus beam and can dark focus nicely in full auto.

A diffuser on the camera's internal flash will make the light softer and diffuse the light to cover a wider region, but the light that goes straight to the particles in front of the lens still reflects as backscatter; same amount of backscatter just not quite so bright.

When night diving it is common to spotlight the fish just like you can spotlight deer. In a very dark environment, when bright light hits an animals eye it adjusts for bright light making it blind to the stuff in the darkness surrounding it. Most animals freeze when they are blind, so just wait until it blindly wobbles into a good position. If you find an eel, try spotlighting the fish in front of the eel and be ready to take pictures!