Underwater photography combines the challenges of (1) trying to make an aesthetic statement that hasn't been made by thousands of photographers
who've dedicated decades of their life to the craft, with (2) trying to
stay alive.
The easiest way
Get into submarine. Get out camera. Point. Shoot. Here are some
examples from a 800' dive in the
Cayman Islands.
The second easiest way
Snorkeling is much simpler than SCUBA diving. The key to snorkeling is
to remember that the human body will always float. It just doesn't
float high enough that you can breathe easily. However, if you add a
few inches of extension to your mouth, your natural floating position
will be more than sufficient for breathing. You can thus stay in the
water for 8 hours without exerting any energy and wait for interesting
subjects to drift or swim underneath.
If you're staying near the surface, you don't need a camera that can
handle the pressure of deep water. A compact digital camera that
has been augmented for snorkeling will work fine. Typically these
cameras are specified waterproof to 10' but will work a little deeper
as well. A good example is the
Olympus Stylus 720SW, $350.
How did it work in the old film days? If you can find a Nikon Action
Touch, you might be surprised at how good it was. This camera has a
very high quality 35/2.8 lens and autofocus above water. Underwater,
you set the subject distance with a convenient dial. There is a nice
big switch that turns the built-in flash on or off.
The Action Touch sold for about $150 in the late 1980s, after which
Nikon took it off the market and no company ever made a similar
camera. The Japanese concluded that nobody is intelligent enough to
focus a camera manually. All the cheap underwater cameras introduced
after the Action Touch were fixed focus underwater and came with lower quality lenses.
Most film photographers would use slide film despite its attendant
narrow exposure tolerance. This may have been because prints can never
convey the drama and brilliant colors of the underwater world.
Here are some snapshots from an old Nikon Action Touch:
Note that an "underwater-lite" camera ends up being a great camera for rafting,
kayaking, heavy rain, or any other time when you need a high quality
waterproof camera but don't need high pressure resistance.
The bad thing about snorkeling is that nearly all of your photos will
end up having a "looking down" perspective. Here are a couple from
Hawaii (taken with the Nikonos V, described below):
The hard (case) way
Strap some tanks, ideally filled with Nitrox, on your back and dive.
Many compact digital cameras, notably the popular Canon line, are
marketed with accessory underwater housings. These rigid plastic cases typically cost
around $160 and are designed for use at all recreational SCUBA depths,
i.e., down to 130' underwater. A housed camera is never as easy to
use as a camera designed specifically for use underwater, so if you
are mostly going to be using a camera at snorkel depths, you are
better off with a camera from the preceding section.
The hard way
What if a compact digital camera is not an adequate tool for the job?
You can put any standard camera into a plastic bag. A plastic bag?!?
Not just any plastic bag. A thick German plastic bag made by
ewa-marine with a metal
screw-down zip-loc top. These ewa guys make plastic bags for cameras
of all sizes with various combinations of lenses
and flashes.
We have tested some ewa-marine bags here at photo.net. To our
amazement, they did not leak. However, we were never been able to use
them successfully. The last time we tried the ewa bag was on a liveaboard trip to the Great Barrier
Reef. The bag was stuffed with a Nikon 8008, SB-24 flash, and
60mm macro lens. As soon as I got to about 30 feet underwater, the
bag was pressing up against the camera to the point that the controls
were inoperable. The AF drive wasn't strong enough to rack the lens
out against the pressure of the bag. The few snapshots produced in
this matter were of substandard quality and, with a 20mm lens, there
was pronounced vignetting from the housing (example at right).
Why Wide-angle Lenses Are Important
Now that we're deep underwater, let's talk about fundamentals rather
than gear for a moment. One fundamental fact is that water magnifies.
Thus you end up needing a wider angle lens than you thought. A 20mm
lens on a full-frame digital SLR or 35mm film camera is not especially
wide for underwater use.
If you have a longer lens, why not just back up? The problem with
backing up underwater is that water tends to absorb red and yellow
light. The more water between your subject and your lens, the bluer
your subject will be. If your light source is on-camera (i.e., if
you are using a flash), every extra foot of water between you and the
subject addings two feet worth of bluing (one as the light goes from the
flash to the subject and one on the way back to the lens).
Underwater photographers are thus very fond of very wide lenses and very
powerful flashes.
Back to the Gear: the Rigid Housing System
If we don't like the plastic bag idea, what about going back to the
rigid plastic housing idea that works so well for digital point and
shoot cameras? We would need a housing custom-designed to enclose a
digital SLR body. Then we would need some kind of extension matched
to any particular lens that we might mount to that body. Then we
would need some way of extending the enclosure to surround an attached
electronic flash. Maybe we would want to have an off-camera flash
connected via an underwater cord. Sound complex? It is, but it works
and is the kind of system that most professional underwater
photographers use. The oldest and most popular brand of underwater
housing is Ikelite.
The Classic Nikonos System
For several decades, Nikon produced a line of flexible cameras that
were inherently waterproof and pressure resistant. The most popular
model was the Nikonos V. This was a rugged little rubber-coated body
that took interchangeable lenses in 15, 20, 28, 35 (standard lens;
works above water too), and 80mm lengths. The camera gave you
aperture-priority or manual exposure control with center-weighted TTL
metering. Optics and image quality are excellent. It was a real
camera that you could take into the shower or down on any SCUBA dive.
The Nikonos V had a fairly unfriendly user interface for a camera that
was designed for people breathing a limited air supply. To focus, you
flip the camera over and stare at the front. Then you turn a dial
until the correct distance is indicated. Then you flip the camera
back over and take your picture.
Nikon fixed all of this with their
Nikonos RS SLR, introduced with great
fanfare in 1992. From the feature list, it looked basically like a
water- and pressure-proof Nikon land SLR. Everything was automatic if you
wanted it to be, the viewfinder offered super high eye relief (since the
user was presumed to be wearing a SCUBA mask). There was an amazing
20-35 zoom lens and a tempting macro lens.
Warts? The Nikonos RS was priced at approximately $10,000 for a
system, much more than a housed SLR. The camera would flood and
require expensive repairs, which Nikon invariably blamed on user
carelessness, despite the fact that these same people had been using
the Nikonos V for many years with no problems. One photo.net reader
who sold his said that what he hated most was the lack of neutral
buoyancy: "I would hand the camera to my wife and then have to adjust
my BC; I don't want a camera that becomes part of my weight system."
Nikon discontinued the RS system in 1996.
Nikonos V Gallery
Here are some snapshots from Hawaii
with a Nikonos V and the standard 35mm lens.
Is it all worth it?
One of the best moments of my life was snorkeling in Kealakekua Bay on
the Big Island of Hawaii. This is the bay where Captain Cook was
worshipped as a God and subsequently stabbed to death by Hawaiians in
1779. I was about 1/2-mile out in the bay, drifting and look down at
three reef sharks, each about six feet in length. They swam off suddenly and I
looked up to see that a school of dolphins, perhaps 60 in number, had
entered the bay. They were 200 yards away and I started swimming
toward them. By the time I'd moved 10 yards, the school was all the
way down at the other end of the bay (1/2 mile in the distance).
I gave up.
To my immense joy, the dolphins started coming back. They were
heading straight toward me, occasionally one would leap but mostly I
just saw 20 dorsal fins out of the water at a time (the other dolphins
swimming underneath). My joy eventually turned to fear when I thought
that perhaps a direct encounter with 60 bottle-nosed animals traveling
at 30 miles-per-hour would not be pleasant. At the last minute, when
the dolphins were no more than 15 feet away, they dove about 10
feet underwater and swam directly underneath. Some of them rolled
on their sides to get a better look up at me. I snapped their picture
with a Nikonos V.
When I got the images back, I found that the dolphins were only faintly
visible on film. My eyes had adjusted to the blue light, but the film
did not. The contrast between dolphin and water, dramatic to my eye,
was very subtle.
Must you have a camera with you?
If you want to be a great photographer, the general rule is that you
should carry a camera at all times. Competing with Christopher Newbert or
Norbert Wu is
a tall order, however. These guys go into the water every day year
after year and wait.
It is difficult to take decent photos on land. It is difficult to go
down underwater with tanks on your back and get back to the boat or
beach alive. Don't feel compelled to combine these activities,
especially if you're going on a dive that is challenging for you.
There is nothing wrong with enjoying the underwater scene while you're
privileged to be on vacation and underwater.
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