Toronto Photography Meetup Group

Well, I have chartered into a completely new territory of the photography for me - underwater. With a borrowed 6MP camera and an underwater housing, I tried to take the pictures while diving last week in Cozumel. First time ever.
First of all, I should say it was fun. A lot of fun. More than I expected fun.
Second all, it was difficult. Not as in impossible, but very difficult. For me as a first time UW photographer, and in general. The diving in Cozumel is drift diving. No, the coral stays where it belong and grows, but current actually moves you. And moves fast. Fast as in "the continuous auto-focus can not response fast enough" (at least in the camera I borrowed). And the need to get very close to the subject goes against the mantra of staying away from the coral reef to protect it. So, most of the pictures are taken upside-down, like hanging head down from a sealing. Must say, not a very comfortable position for anything, and for compositing a picture in particular.
But I'm going to do it again. Absolutely.
Taken at 50ft of depth of the clear Caribbean waters, built-in flash with a diffuser, ISO 400, some post-processing in PS.

<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/bright_side/4232653614/" title="Palythoa coral by bright_side, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4063/4232653614_98f79fd4ca.jpg" width="375" height="500" alt="Palythoa coral"></a>

I'd really appreciate any pointers, links, recommendations, and suggestions based on the personal experience related to the UW photography.

And Happy New Year!

Welcome to U/W Photography! It's a whole new ball of wax as you just found out. You've got less light, water particulates, magnification of water and juggle buoyancy, breathing, currents, depth, trying to compose while wearing a dive mask etc and on top of that you have to manage it all for the split second it takes to fire the shutter.

I'd recommend mucking around in a pool with some objects either floating, submerged on the floor or suspended to get the feel and distance judging. I've got an old Nikon V system but I found out that the battery well plastic has cracked. It works on the surface but not sure if it will work under pressure if I go diving with it. VERY tempted to pick up an aluminum housing for my 5D MKII. No AF on the Nikonos V but if you can buy 'em for next to nothing on ebay but you'll be shooting film.

You can buy waterproof housings for most P&S cameras that you can dive down to 50-100ft or so that's a lot cheaper than a housed DSLR route.

Granted, I used to DM for a few local diveshops back in the day but haven't dived locally for 8 odd years. I think I'm getting soft and turning into a warm water wimp. lol

Is this your first time diving? Nice shot by the way.

cool shot, would like to try it one day too! Hope you entertain us with more

Thanks, Carlton.
I go with D200 on the land mass, but quite hesitant to take it down under - both cost and potential flooding concerns. I was exactly thinking about picking up an advanced P&S and a UW housing. A strobe is high on my list - I think I rather go for a cheaper P&S, but add a strobe to a setup.
No, it wasn't my first dive - I've logged 100+ dives so far, mostly in 8mm wet suit in the frigid waters of lakes Huron, Ontario and St.Lawrence river - mainly wreck diving. But when I have a chance and the stars align, I go and dive bare skin in Caribbean.

Nowadays you can get some waterproof p&s, but I think it only works up to 3m deep or something

i have an olympus tough 8000 and it's designed to be safe to use in the water. worked wonders while i was on vacation. (it also does iso 1600 amazingly for a p&s)

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2489/4180703820_a73e02bce0.jpg

waters weren't as clear in this part of the ocean, but it still handled AF pretty well.


i totally agree with the currents issue though. I swam by some corals and by the time i had my camera in front of me i was already a few meters away.

Yup. Electronics and water don't seem to mix well eh? I once had my Amphibico u/w housing leak on me. I almost lost my camcorder but I lucked out and it started working again. Turns out the housing was defective due to bad paint on the door seal area.

Maybe buying a cheapie DSLR and a housing to go with it might be a better option. I'd hate to lose a 1D or 5D due to flooding or in your case a D200. Hence the Nikonos V option.

U/W video and photography in the local lakes just doesn't cut it. Doesn't take much to get bored of watching zebra mussel encrusted wrecks in low visibility.

Got to figure out a way to move and live in the tropics!

I was considering picking up one of those for my last vacation. It came down to the Canon Powershot D10 and the Panasonic DMC-TS1 because they got the better reviews for image quality. The Panasonic lost out due to cumbersome to use and didn't like the look/profile of the Canon D10. The Panasonic is submersible up to 10ft while the Canon can do 33ft.

You should check out Stephen Frink (one of the gurus of U/W photography based down in Florida) or Cathy Church (she co-wrote the book Essential Guide to the Nikonos System with her ex-husband Jim) based out of the Cayman Islands. There are other top u/w photographers of course but these two are usually on the tips of any diver's tongue.

http://www.stephenfrink.com/

http://www.cathychurch.com/

Thank you for the links.

Yep, not much excitement in still photography locally - no colors at all. But making a dive movie could be cool. Which leads more to a P&S, as movie-making DSLR isn't yet that cheap. But again, would need a different light for that. I have time to figure out what to do, as my next trip down South won't be any time soon. But might be going to San Diego on business rather regularly, and doing some kelp forest diving there is appealing.

Nevertheless, slowly but surely go through my captured images. The one below is taken at depth about 90ft.

<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/bright_side/4238473892/" title="Drifting over brain coral by bright_side, on Flickr"><img src="http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4034/4238473892_3dcea2d37b.jpg" width="500" height="380" alt="Drifting over brain coral"></a>

If interested, feel free to drop by at for more.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/bright_sid ... 980379159/

My past family doctor I used to see specialized in pressure related illness, specifically with scuba diving. Flipping through the various scuba diving magazines, there were quite a few ads for enclosures for P&S to D/SLR cameras. Probably along with those mentioned links, maybe a scuba diving-specific forum might have a photography subsection.