Photo feedback wanted

[Mel.B]

Hi,

I've been taking underwater photos for about 6mths now. I have a C5050 (no strobe) and am very much a 'point and shot' girl! I get competely confused when I read about appetures and shutter speeds on land so there's no way I could work it out underwater, let alone know what settings to actually use!

Anyway below are a couple of photos that I have taken that I like and I'd really appreciate some constructive feedback to help me improve (and I know some of that feedback will be to learn how to use/understand appetures & shutter speeds :laughing: )

Mel

 

[ssra30]

There is not much of a mystery regarding shutterspeed and aparture. I think the best thing to do is to experiment a bit especially when you have a stationary subject like the two pictures above. Exposure seemed to be ok. You are stuck with internal flash so there is no way to play around with the direction of strobe etc. For point and shoot camera like C5050, I just go F8 for macro when I want maximum depth of field.
If I want narrow depth of field for effect then smaller aparture. For wide angle, you want bigger aparture as your flash will not be strong enough and you will have to rely on ambient light so I generally ended up around F5.6. Whatever shutterspeed you choose, at least try to stay at least 1/80s or faster so you won't get too much motion artifact. The rest is just about experimenting.

For your pictures, I would try to work a bit more on composition, just take your time since these 2 subjects do not move very much.
For the scorpion/stonefish picture, you are shooting slight from above down, and more from the rear so the angle is a bit less than ideal. Most fish portrait of these types look a bit more dramatic when you are shooting from the head perspective at the same level as the fish or from slight below, shooting up.

The starfish picture, I happen to like the supermacro perspective better. Get in close with supermacro mode and fill up the whole frame with just the texture of the starfish or else back off an get the whole starfish if there is a nice background.
This picture will really benefit from external strobe where you can place a strobe at a more interesting angle to get some nice shadow effect. There is not much you can do with fixed internal flash unfortunately. Sometimes shooting from an angle rather than head on will give you more depth and less of a flat image as well.
I think you have a good start. Since you shoot with digital camera, just take your time and try to shoot the same subject from many different angles, soon you will find your own prefer way of approaching a particular subject and you might be surprise by result of some pictures with more unusual angle.