Over-exposed and washed out pictures

[Diver Dave1]

I agree with Larry C. Learning your camera and learning to shoot in manual will help you a lot. Practicing in a pool or a nearby dive location will let you learn at a lower cost than waiting for a great trip and being disappointed with the resulting pictures. Have anyone available pose for pics for you as a target for exposure. The pool I use for practice has plastic fish hanging from floats available and that works great for practice alone. It would be easy to make your own targets that way.

For wide angle work, I shoot all in manual. I set the camera shutter and ap. to have the blue water background at the correct exposure. This takes care of the background. Then I adjust the strobe to give the proper exposure for subject being lit by the strobe. Then its all balanced. You are pre-selecting a distance for the subject. Usually, things 2-3 ft away are about as far as you can light well so that is a good place to start.
And for mistakes or changing light, etc, you can use Lightroom or Photoshop Elements for some correction.
Shooting in manual takes some practice but it gives more consistent results for wide angle compared with other methods.

Here is an example. The 'cover shot' at my website with the Manta. shiningseastudio's Photos
The camera is manually set to expose the upper left blue water. The strobe is manually set to light the manta. The reef and water to the right is getting less sunlight and no strobe light so its underexposed but not detracting from the photo.
Visiting the websites recommended by others above is a good way to self-teach and is Martin's book on underwater photography, 4th ed.
Does that help?

 

[Shipwreckscanada]

I agree with Larry C. Learning your camera and learning to shoot in manual will help you a lot. Practicing in a pool or a nearby dive location will let you learn at a lower cost than waiting for a great trip and being disappointed with the resulting pictures. Have anyone available pose for pics for you as a target for exposure. The pool I use for practice has plastic fish hanging from floats available and that works great for practice alone. It would be easy to make your own targets that way.

For wide angle work, I shoot all in manual. I set the camera shutter and ap. to have the blue water background at the correct exposure. This takes care of the background. Then I adjust the strobe to give the proper exposure for subject being lit by the strobe. Then its all balanced. You are pre-selecting a distance for the subject. Usually, things 2-3 ft away are about as far as you can light well so that is a good place to start.
And for mistakes or changing light, etc, you can use Lightroom or Photoshop Elements for some correction.
Shooting in manual takes some practice but it gives more consistent results for wide angle compared with other methods.

Here is an example. The 'cover shot' at my website with the Manta. shiningseastudio's Photos
The camera is manually set to expose the upper left blue water. The strobe is manually set to light the manta. The reef and water to the right is getting less sunlight and no strobe light so its underexposed but not detracting from the photo.
Visiting the websites recommended by others above is a good way to self-teach and is Martin's book on underwater photography, 4th ed.
Does that help?

Yes, thank you, the information is VERY useful. I ordered the book you recommend from Amazon. I also noticed that he has some how-to YouTube videos to look at. Great resource, I have a lot of work, fun ahead of me.

 

[ksporry]

Let me give you another tip: experiment with your new camera and flash above water. play around with it in the evening when its darker. There are differences between underwater and above water photography, but the principles are still the same. First learn what aperture and shutterspeed do for you. Then learn how you can use those to control exposure, then add the flash to the equation.

from what I understood is that backscatter is caused by flash too close to the lens pointing forward. Move the flash away from the lens and angle it more inward. This also means getting closer to your subject, but then again, flashes for underwater are not meant to light a subject 10 meters away. they are meant to bring out the natural colours.

 

[ivakdiver]

The Manual setting for the DC1400 ,only allows two choices for aperture f2.8 and f 7. something, from what I remember, pretty limiting compared to other compact cameras. Still, some opportunity to change settings to help reduce overexposure. The f2.8 in Auto is quite limiting, making it important to adjust the strobe power down when you have overexposures.

 

[Hatul]

I was going to say the same as ksporry. The nice thing about digital cameras is you can practice and experiment on land indoors to your heart's content. Get the shots right first on land with your flash.