I brought my fins and camera back to my home in the temperate waters of the northeast for the first time and managed a few shots I was mildly happy with. Sorry for the watermarks, they are the only small versions I had of these.
The first outing meant dunking my camera into the watering holes I used to play in as a kid. Generally I stayed above 5' in depth and looked for interesting vegetation. Shooting upwards to get the surface of the water helps make the water look a little clearer and aiming the strobes outward reduced backscatter. I could get the exif data if you really want (I think f/9, 1/100 sec. iso 100??).
The second outing involved shooting blue sharks out of Rhode Island. When I used them, the strobes were away from the lens and deflected outward but in this case, some backscatter was unavoidable. I chose to live with it and, in at least the first image, I think it helps add to the excitement. Strobes weren't totally necessary here. I did make one cardinal mistake and that was, being a temperate water newbie, I reduced my shutter speed for much of the encounter to 1/80 and 1/60 sec. With such large and fast moving animals, this created a lot of images that looked great in the back-screen but had a slight amount of blur to them. Iso 400, f/9-12, 1/60-1/100 sec.
It also helps to have friendly subjects that are willing to get close, but there is such a thing as too close. I'm still buffing out the scratches:
