Northwest Dive Club

Greetings,

Summary: What do you think I did wrong today?

Details: I just got a point & shoot camera (a Intova IC 16) and tried it a Edmonds today. Visibility was 5 to 10 feet. We were in 25 to 30 feet of water. The pictures are really, really terrible. Much worse they things looked to our eyes.

I'd love any diagnoses and suggestions so that when I take future pictures, they might at least be mediocre.

Thanks!
Carl

No expert, but did you use a desiccant in the housing for fogging? These appear to be either fogged up, or out of focus.

For starters, get closer.

In bad viz, with a camera that doesn't have the horsepower for the pics, wide angle and anything further than about 4' away is a total crapshoot.

Macro is your friend!

Keep shooting, and keep posting!

Closer....now even closer, now closer yet.

And get more light, A strobe or good hand light is essential to getting true colors. Not an advertisement but all that green shows you were using ambient light. In the sound, especially this time of year without good lighting everything is going to be green. Also as stated it looks as if your housing was fogged. A common problem in warm weather. Get a cooler with cool fresh water and keep you camera in it till your ready to splash. Also a good idea is to put it back in the cooler after the dive and keep it out of the sun at all times.

ditto on the closer... Macro most of the time here.
you can drop a moisture muncher in the case to help keep the moisture out.

Thanks, Thanks, Thanks Photo Doctors!

• Desiccant and/or the cooler: That makes sense and I didn't see or think of it. (The air temp yesterday was 20°F warmer than the water temp.)
• I did try some closer pictures (see attached), but that didn't work either ... likely because of the fog problem.
• As for light, until I'm ready for a strobe (this was my 13th dive), my hope was that the camera's flash would help. I had it set to "auto", but according to the photos' metadata, the camera never decided to use the flash. Should I set the flash to always on?
• Also, they sell a red filter for this camera. Might that be useful?

Aside: My philosophy for photography is to start cheap and simple, make mistakes, learn -- with help -- from those mistakes, and gradually improve.

- Carl

I think you have the right idea in starting simple and working your way up. I am no photographer by any means but have taken pretty damn good shots using the methods described above.
With the particle in our waters and the sub-optimal viz you should focus on macro photography. The cool thing about macro is that our little nudibranchs usually just sit there. I am seeing some fogging as well and this would not allow your camera to focus correctly on the subject thus giving you these shots.

I have seen many people keeping their cameras in a cool bucket of water and that seems to work for them.

Good luck and I am looking forward to seeing some successful photos from you down the road.

Depending on the camera and flash capability you may be able to use just the on board flash...or be frustrated. As you've gathered LIGHT, LOTS AND LOTS of light is necessary. A flash from VERY close up might be OK even in our conditions. Having a honking BIG light on the subject at the same time may help a LOT. Some cameras simply will not focus without enough light. There it depends on the camera, it's lens, it's sensor and ambient + accessory light available.

For example: my wife had a Nikon P5000 PnS. It was a poor performer without enough light. Give it light and it did pretty well.
I got a Casio XZ-1000 PnS. It was immediately a much better low light camera but around here without a strobe it was mostly limited to pictures less than a foot away. That package was very compact to easy to carry on a dive.

Note-FWIW at 13 dives it may be worth putting the camera away for a few months and concentrating on just diving. Get that trim and buoyancy down. Get comfortable. Then think about the camera again.

carlk3 wrote:Thanks, Thanks, Thanks Photo Doctors!

• Desiccant and/or the cooler: That makes sense and I didn't see or think of it. (The air temp yesterday was 20°F warmer than the water temp.)
• I did try some closer pictures (see attached), but that didn't work either ... likely because of the fog problem.
• As for light, until I'm ready for a strobe (this was my 13th dive), my hope was that the camera's flash would help. I had it set to "auto", but according to the photos' metadata, the camera never decided to use the flash. Should I set the flash to always on?
• Also, they sell a red filter for this camera. Might that be useful?

Aside: My philosophy for photography is to start cheap and simple, make mistakes, learn -- with help -- from those mistakes, and gradually improve.

- Carl

PICT0031.JPG

I would turn the flash on permanently if you have a strobe and use light to actuate it. Also, if you can, lower your flash brightness to the lowest point(save battery) that trips your external strobe.

Oh, and apologies if this has been mentioned....

I learned the hard way about leaving my camera in the sun for a few minutes on a surface interval. I splashed and the camera went "poof", and fogged completely and did not clear until 55 minutes into my dive.

Since then, I have a small cooler that I take on every dive outing, including charters that don't have camera buckets. I put cold water from the faucet in it in the morning, then leave the camera in it until I head for the water. It has never fogged again - and I no longer use the moisture desiccants. It doubles as a fresh water rinse in between dives, and at the end of the day I toss my back up light, compass, mask, etc in it as an end of the day fresh water rinse on the way home.

A camera case is a perfect miniature greenhouse, and in the sun it heats up in minutes if not seconds. When that hot case hits cold water nature takes its course and you have a pretty useless camera for the rest of your dive.

I love my little cooler, which fills the above bill, and acts as a protector from klutzes (me especially) I don't have a monster rig, but I do have an Olympus and a single strobe which does get a bit bigger than the typical point and shoot.

Point and shoot cameras are awesome, BTW, and with a bit of work you can take good pictures. If you want to click on the link at the bottom of this post, almost all of my pictures were taken with a small Casio point and shoot and no strobe. Only the last couple recent collections were done using manual and a strobe, an area that I am only just getting into. I love photography, but I have been limited by $$ (and still am), so I'm working on becoming the best photographer I can be within the restraints of my equipment.

A "death star" camera rig will NOT make you a good photographer. You are doing it right, start with what you have, shoot shoot and shoot some more, ask questions, make adjustments, learn what you're looking at and where and when it lives, and just have a blast! You don't have to impress anyone, the best photogs on this board had a beginning, and most of them are helpful and encouraging. Anyone who 'looks down their nose' at your photography attempts isn't work bothering about anyway!

Good luck!!

fmerkel wrote:Note-FWIW at 13 dives it may be worth putting the camera away for a few months and concentrating on just diving. Get that trim and buoyancy down. Get comfortable. Then think about the camera again.

Oh, and this -

The more solid your in water skills get the better photog you will be able to become.

My only caveat is that taking pictures was part of what kept me getting back in the water over and over. Because I only had a small point and shoot clipped to a D Ring I could let go of it or just ignore it if conditions required.

I've seem folks start diving then give it up as they get bored... taking pics keeps me getting back in the water. You never never know what you might see, even after hundreds of dives on the same site!

Thanks to everyone for their specific advice and also for the more general advice on diving experience and the distraction vs. added interest of photography.

Definitely set the flash to "always on"! You're never going to encounter a situation underwater in the PNW where you have TOO much light from the flash.

Photography underwater, in limited visibility such as ours ALWAYS is, and using the camera flash, will have to be macro and pretty close to the subject. The reason for this is that the light from the flash is so close to being in perfect line with the camera lens. Light bounces back directly from all the particles in the water, so backscatter is a big problem. This is one of the big reasons for adding a strobe here -- not even so much to get MORE light, as to get it off-axis.

Which is not to say that you can't take very good pictures with a small camera using onboard flash. My friend Bob Bailey took photos for a couple of years, if I remember, using exactly that setup. I have a triptych on my wall of his pictures from that era, and they are among my favorites that I have ever seen him take.

I'd recommend against using your on-camera flash.

You'll achieve much better results lighting a subject from the side with your dive light. Play around and see for yourself.

Does anyone around here use a red filter on their point & shoot? I assume if one did, you wouldn't then use artificial light.

carlk3 wrote:Does anyone around here use a red filter on their point & shoot? I assume if one did, you wouldn't then use artificial light.

You need a strobe or internal flash.....Period.
I red filter does nothing for you below ten feet........

Light man, you need more light!!!!
I know, it's kind of onerous. A simple task like picture taking becomes a veritable $$$ nightmare when taken underwater, not to mention more clumsy hauling the larger kit around.

If you don't have a strobe yet, until you get one set your flash to always on and get as close as you can, then get closer. You definitely have a moisture issue too, so get the moisture munchers and put one in the housing. With those few tips you will be shocked at how much improvement you will see. Then, get a strobe!!