Underwater Photography

Underwater Photograpy – A few tips

Probably the most important thing we discovered when taking our first underwater photographs was that the white balance setting on the camera will become your new best friend. Rather than just using the underwater setting on the camera (which will still produce reaonable results), learning to use the White Balance setting effectively will allow you to take really colourful photographs that the underwater setting might not fully capture.

The reason for this is that at different depths the light from the surface is defracted more and so the colour settings on the camera need to be adjusted to allow for this. So to compensate for depth effect on the light, when you are at depth with some good sealife – say 20 metres – take a white balance setting against something white that is also at 20 metres with you e.g a bare arm, or a whiteboard or even the sand on the bottom of the dive site if you are close enough. This will allow the camera to calculate how the colour white looks at that depth therefore reproduce all the other colours accordingly. Later in the dive when you move up to say 10 Metres then take a new White Balance setting to allow the camera to adjust again. This fairly simple step will make a huge amount of difference to the colours that can then be seen in your digital photograps.

Also try not to use the Flash unless you are very close to your subject – by close, I mean less then 2 meters. As there are a lot of particles in sea water (even if it looks very clear) when you use the flash on a subject that is a long way off, the flash can often bounce off these particles and you often end up with a photo that just shows thousands of illuminated particles.

Try not to forget all about your dive tables and pressure levels when using an underwater digital camera. It is very easy to become distracted once you start snapping away and often some interesting sealife can distract you from your group and also make you forget to maintain sensible and smooth ascent rates. It is really not worth the risk of decompression sickness to affect your dive profile by going up and down to frequently during the dive just to try and get the perfect picture.

An extremely useful piece of software that is perfect for improving photographs that are taken both underwater and in everyday life is Adobe Photoshop. It is not cheap but it is the best photograph software on the market and is used by industry experts as well as just home users. Just take a look at the improvements that can made in just a few seconds by using Photoshop, such improvements just cannot be made using the cheapest image software.

Morray Eel underwater Before Photoshop

Morray Eel underwater After Photoshop correction

Adobe Photoshop can be ordered online directly from Amazon. Click here for full details.

The final tip for today is to Stay Safe When Diving. Never dive alone and do not dive at all unless you are PADI or SSI certified or if you are with a Divemaster or Instructor who has passed the PADI or SSI Divemaster or Instructors exams. If you are diving with a diving School then please ensure that you are using a PADA or SSI certified school and check the schools reviews by doing an Internet search. More information on the PADI and SSI certifications can be seen at these sites: Padi.com and Divessi.com

Please feel welcome to add comments below about any underwater photography tips and tricks that you may have.
We would love this page to become a shared resource for all underwater photography enthusiasts