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Underwater photography is fun,
surprisingly easy, and allows anyone to bring back beautiful images from another world.
In terms of equipment, there are two main approaches to underwater photography: housed cameras and underwater cameras. Housed cameras involve a water-tight housing made to accomodate a normal land-based camera. An underwater camera is a purpose-built water-tight camera requiring no external housing. I use a simple underwater camera made by Nikon: the Nikonos-V. It's affordable, rugged, generally dependable, and offers a fair degree of flexibility underwater.
Color is strongly attenuated underwater. Although our eyes may adjust and compensate for the relatively greater blueness, film will not. An underwater strobe is essential to color correct and effectively illuminate subjects underwater. For the Nikonos-V, I use the Nikon SB-105 strobe. The camera and strobe are connected by a cable and attached to a bracket for use underwater. Before each dive, batteries and film are loaded and seals, known as 'o-rings', are cleaned and greased. Once the camera is sealed, one roll of film and one charged set of batteries are the limit for the dive -- you can't change film underwater! For close-up work, I use a set of simple extension tubes made by Nikon for the Nikonos-V.
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| These extension tubes simply
extend the camera lens further from the body, and allow 1:2, 1:1 and even 2:1
capabilities. This close-up technique provides a greatly reduced depth of field, and
requires a framer to be attached. A framer places real restrictions on what can be
photographed (fish are not inclined to cooperate with a framer). For film, I prefer the saturated colors offered by low-ASA slide films, particularly those made by Kodak. Kodachrome-64 is a favorite, but using a small strobe (e.g. SB-105) with limited light output, good results on this film are restricted to macro and close-up subjects. Most of my underwater pictures were shot using Ektachrome-100. Some of the macro work shown here is on Kodachrome-64. For this Website, the slides were then scanned on an Olympus OM-10 slide scanner, and re-sized/compressed for reasonable downloading ease. Note that this process may add minor artifacts not present in the original slides. Underwater photography is fun, easy, affordable, and adds a fascinating dimension to scuba diving. |
