Underwater Photography

DigiFish

2006-03-20T08:12:00.000-08:00

DigiFish Site dedicated to Digital underwater photography.

Nikon D200 underwater housing from Hugyfot | Digital Camera Review

2006-03-20T08:10:00.000-08:00

Nikon D200 underwater housing from Hugyfot | Digital Camera Review

SanDisk 2006 Red Sea Underwater Photography Competition

2006-03-16T08:04:00.000-08:00

SanDisk 2006 Red Sea Underwater Photography Competition: "Eilat, Israel, April 24 –29, 2006. The SanDisk competition, open to amateurs and professionals alike, is divided into two parts, the Eilat Shoot-out and the Images of the World competition. "

GIANT OCTOPUS ATTACKS ROV

2006-02-06T11:45:00.000-08:00

GIANT OCTOPUS ATTACKS ROV: "
A giant pacific octopus attacked a Seaeye Falcon ROV working off Vancouver Island as it was locating and recovering receivers tracking pacific offshore salmon migration."

Holy Squid! Photos Offer First Glimpse of Live Deep-Sea Giant

2006-02-06T11:40:00.000-08:00

Holy Squid! Photos Offer First Glimpse of Live Deep-Sea Giant: "Like something straight out of a Jules Verne novel, an enormous tentacled creature looms out of the inky blackness of the deep Pacific waters. "

Beneath the waves with the Nikon D2X

2006-01-24T13:50:00.000-08:00

Beneath the waves with the Nikon D2X Alex Mustard's experience using the Nikon D2X underwater.

Wetpixel.com and DivePhotoGuide International Photo Competition

2006-01-16T09:40:00.000-08:00

Wetpixel.com and DivePhotoGuide International Photo Competition 2006

Sealife Underwater Digital Camera DC500 - 'Shark Mode'

2005-11-21T14:28:00.000-08:00

Sealife Underwater Digital Camera DC500: "The new SeaLife DC500 features a new 'Shark Mode' for faster and sharper pictures of moving objects underwater and in sports photography on land. "

World Festival of Underwater Pictures

2005-11-14T10:24:00.000-08:00

World Festival of Underwater Pictures : "Antibes 27th to 30th October - 2005 theme is: the Abyss"

Cayman Net News: Underwater photographers come together

2005-10-12T09:38:00.000-07:00

Cayman Net News: Underwater photographers come together

Vancouver Aquarium Marine Science Centre

2005-09-02T13:26:00.000-07:00

Vancouver Aquarium Marine Science Centre

Beneath The Sea

2005-09-01T14:26:00.000-07:00

Beneath The Sea 2006 - Exhibition and Underwater photography competition March 2006

Underwater Images 2006 - Photo Video Competition

2005-08-29T14:39:00.000-07:00

Underwater Images 2006 - Photo Video Competition

St. Vincent an the Grenadines

2005-08-29T14:34:00.000-07:00

St. Vincent an the Grenadines West indian diving at its best....

Hartenberger

2005-08-26T14:39:00.000-07:00

Hartenberger High end, very high quality dive lamps, strobes for underwater photography professionals.

Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2004/2005

2005-08-26T14:26:00.000-07:00

Wildlife Photographer of the Year 2004/2005 A very prestigous photo competition with a specific category for Underwater Photography. This years competition is closed but be prepared to sign up for next year!

Underwater Photography Competition

2005-08-26T14:21:00.000-07:00

Underwater Photography Competition

UnderwaterPhotography.com

2005-08-26T13:50:00.000-07:00

UnderwaterPhotography.com Great site for courses, equipment and travel

Nikon School of Underwater Photography

2005-08-26T13:47:00.000-07:00

Nikon School of Underwater Photography

Underwater Silhouettes

2005-08-24T08:30:00.000-07:00

A sihouette is a view of an object or scene that shows and outline and a featureless interior. Silhouettes typically lack colorful detail and the subject is often captured as a dark blue or black outline against the surface of the rippled water highlighted by the light of the sun.

You can use sihouettes to convey the dream like qualities of being underwater. Underwater photgraphers usually try to photograph larger objects in silhouette, such as divers, sharks, mantas, and large corals.

Because you are just dealing with outlines and dark objects you must pay particular attention to the composition of your picture and the position of the subject of your picture. You must make sure that your subject is directly between the your camera and the sun.
Silhouettes are more dramatic and work best when the photographer is diving in clear water with decent visibility.

Depending on the mood you want to create it is best to get close to your subject so that your picture does not end up having a tiny undescernable subject in the middle with a huge dark area around it. Of course there are exceptions to this. For example, in the image on the left I deliberately wanted to convey the sense of space around the snorkler.
The choice of film is pretty arbitrary because you are typically only dealing with a monochrome image, and this is usually blue or green depending on the waters you are shooting in. I tend to stick with Fuji Velvia because I love the color balance of this film.

Another important consideration is your exposure setting. The Nikonos V has a built in light meter but this can give innacurate readings ( and lead to very dark or very light backgrounds) so you might want to bracket your shots (take three pictures varying the exposure up and down one stop) to give a range of effects.

Usually when you photograph underwater you always use your flash but when taking a silhouette picture you need to turn your flash off. In this way, you won't get any back scatter from particles in the water. You can even shoot in somewhat murky water where other shots are impossible.

Photo Competition 2005-2006

2005-08-17T09:43:00.000-07:00

Photo Competition 2005-2006| underwater.com.au

Cone Snail

2005-08-12T08:10:00.000-07:00

Every diver should know about the Cone Snail!

Close-Up Photography

2005-08-10T09:15:00.000-07:00

"...taking close-up pictures is easy, and you get great results!"

Close -up or macro photography is ideal place for any beginning underwater photographer to start. It is not too difficult.

Your main aim is to take full-frame well composed and correctly exposed pictures of small subjects. Such subjects could include anemones, nudibranchs, coral polyps. fish portraits, shrimp, and countless other small creatures.

Close-up photography is also a great eye-opener, as you often see far more detail in your pictures than during the dive. It is only natural for people to want to learn more about what they photograph. The more you know the more you will find to photograph.

Close-up Photography Using a Housed Camera

You can take close up pictures using a single lens reflex camera (such as Nikon F4, or N70) in an underwater housing.
There are several advantages to using cameras in housings, you have a greater choice of lenses you can use, you see exactly what you will get through the lens. You don't need a wire framer to estimate distance, which often has the effect of scaring fish away when you are trying to get a picture of one. However, for this advantage you get a corresponding increase in price.

Extension-Tubes and close-up outfits

A big advantage with using extension tubes and close-up outfits for underwater photography is that you do all your camera setting up before you go into the water. During the dive you can concentrate more on the dive, all you have to do is find a suitably interesting subject, frame it and press the shutter. Even better, the photos you get are, more often than not, far better than you would get with wide angle. The colors are often brilliant, and you don't have to worry about suspended particles in the water.

You don't need to have crystal clear conditions to get great pictures. You can take great pictures in 30 meter visibility, or in 3 meter visibility.

Extension tubes are used with Nikonos rangefinder cameras such as Nikonos V and Nikonos III. An extension tube is a tube that fits between the camera and lens that alter the optical characteristic of the lens and lets you take full-frame pictures of small objects. An extension tube system includes both the tube and framer. The framer provides an outline of the picture area and shows the photographer where the lens is focused.

Close-up or Macro kits are designed to accomplish the same goal but they go about it in a different way. A macro kit consists of a lens and framer that fit over the primary lens.

A 1:1 extension tube and framer allows you to reproduce a life size image on film. In other words, the image you see on film is the exact same size as the object.
A 1:2 system reproduces an image that is one-half life size, and a 1:3 system yields an image that is one third life size. With a 1:2 system, a two-inch long fish would be one-inch long on film, creating a reproduction ratio of 1:2.
A 2:1 extension tube and framer produces a magnified image on film, one in which the image on film is twice the size of the actual life size subject. This magnified image is available only for Nikonos extension tube systems.

One of the major advantages of extension tube and macro kit system is the ability to completely set up your camera system before you get into the water so you don't have think about anything technical once you're in the water. However, that does mean that the camera settings have to be correct, otherwise you could end up with the entire roll of film out of focus or badly exposed.

Setting Up Your Camera for Close-up

With extension tubes and framers made by Nikonos, you will want to set the lens on minimum focus and f/22. The reason the lens should be set on minimum focus for the Nikonos framers is that the framers are designed to reference the plane of focus when the lens is focused at the minimum focus distance. However, other manufactures design their extension tube framers to focus the lens on infinity. By using the infinity setting for the 35mm lens, the optics are sharper because the lens is designed for it's best optics at infinity.

When using an extension tube system, the lens aperture should be set on f/22 or f/16. You want the greatest depth-of field possible. A 1-1 extension tube will give a much narrower depth of field than a 1-3 extension tube.

Even though your Nikonos lens indicates f/22, when you are shooting with extension tubes you are actually allowing much less light to strike the film than a normal f/22 setting, this means that to properly expose your film, you need to use a flashgun, and place it very close to your subject.

Nikonos and Close-up Kit

With the Nikonos Close-up Kit you focus the lens on infinity and set the aperture
on f/22 or f16.

Flash Synch. Speeds

The synch speed setting for a Nikonos V camera is 1/90th of a second. Slower speeds, such as 1/60th of a second, will also work just fine with Nikonos cameras, but if the speed is too slow and there is too much ambient light you shots may not be sharp.

Using a flashgun will give you an effective shutter speed of anything from 1/250th to 1/1000th of a second will yield extremely crisp images. Because the aperture is so small(f/22), ambient light does not expose the film in most macro situations.

Most macro photographers prefer to use films with comparatively slow film speeds because those films produce images with less grain and better colour saturation. The films of choice for macro photography tend to be Kodachrome 25, Fuji 50, Kodachrome 64, and Velvia.

Pink Clownfish

2005-08-05T17:03:00.000-07:00

This photograph was taken in Batangas in the Philippines.

Clownfish, also known as anemonefish, get their name from their bright colors and their behaviour. They are members of the or Damselfish family.

They appear to be clowning about, but are really aggressively defending their territory.

Clownfish live in mutual symbiosis with anemones. The clownfish protects the anemone from anemone-eating fish, and, in turn, the stinging tentacles of the anemone protect the anemone fish from its predators (a special mucus on the anemone fish protects it from the stinging tentacles).

Each species of clownfish favours a particular anemone.
An anemone often plays host to pair of adult fish, and a variable number of juveniles.

You can often tell from the anemone which species of clownfish will be there without actually seeing the fish.

Notes:
Identification: Pink to nearly orange; without crossbars, but with a relatively narrow white stripe from top of the head to beginning of the dorsal fin, and continuing along base of the fin its entire length.
Distribtution: Indo-West-Pacific.
Preferred Host Anemone Species: Heteractis magnifica; Stichodactyla mertensii.