vicky
Guest
You must remember one simple thing. As you probably remember, water absorbs the colors as you go deep. The same thing happens to the colors as you get far awat from your subject.
For example, if you are diving at 30 meters and trying to take a photo from something 15 meters away (in Red Sea it is standard vis.
) then you'll get colors similar like if you were diving at 45 meters.
So what's the solution? Since our main problem in underwater photography is the water (loss of colors, backscatter, etc) then the best solution should be to REMOVE THE WATER...
But we can't do that, so what we can actually do is to minimize the amount of water between you and your subject. It is by far more effective than taking long-distance photos and then correct them with Photoshop..
What else? If you take photos from things more than 2 meters away with your flash, light will travel 4 meters (2 meters to illuminate your subject and 2 meters back to your camera) so you can forget from the warm colors....Don't take photos at greater distances if you want to see nice colors. This is what photographers call "The BLAH zone". It is not really so far away so you see some details, but colors are faded and focus is degraded (particles in the water scatter the light, so you lose sharpness relatively fast in the water). The Blah zone variates according to visibilty, lens sharpness, etc: Avoid this Blah zone!
Very soon you'll learn to know what distance is Blah for your camera (I think that you've already an idea of it).
So:
1. Get CLOSE to your subjects. As close as possible.
2. Use yuor strobe and better: an external strobe if possible.
3. So you think you are close? Get CLOSER!
These will dramatically improve your photos.
For example, if you are diving at 30 meters and trying to take a photo from something 15 meters away (in Red Sea it is standard vis.
) then you'll get colors similar like if you were diving at 45 meters.So what's the solution? Since our main problem in underwater photography is the water (loss of colors, backscatter, etc) then the best solution should be to REMOVE THE WATER...
But we can't do that, so what we can actually do is to minimize the amount of water between you and your subject. It is by far more effective than taking long-distance photos and then correct them with Photoshop..
What else? If you take photos from things more than 2 meters away with your flash, light will travel 4 meters (2 meters to illuminate your subject and 2 meters back to your camera) so you can forget from the warm colors....Don't take photos at greater distances if you want to see nice colors. This is what photographers call "The BLAH zone". It is not really so far away so you see some details, but colors are faded and focus is degraded (particles in the water scatter the light, so you lose sharpness relatively fast in the water). The Blah zone variates according to visibilty, lens sharpness, etc: Avoid this Blah zone!
Very soon you'll learn to know what distance is Blah for your camera (I think that you've already an idea of it).
So:
1. Get CLOSE to your subjects. As close as possible.
2. Use yuor strobe and better: an external strobe if possible.
3. So you think you are close? Get CLOSER!
These will dramatically improve your photos.
