If you’ve ever been snorkeling on a tropical reef, you know how
incredibly beautiful and full of life the world is beneath the surface
of the ocean. Until recently, if you wanted to take pictures in that
environment, you either had to buy extremely expensive and
temperamental gear or settle for a single-use film camera with a cheap
plastic lens that you bought from the hotel gift shop. For casual
vacationers, neither option offered much of a chance to get good
pictures. The pro-level setup had potential, but required lots of
difficult trial-and-error work, and the disposable camera...well, let’s
just say they were right to call it disposable.
Digital technology has been nothing short of miraculous when it comes
to underwater photography. Sure, high-end shooters will still lay down
hard-earned money for an advanced SLR in a housing, but now relative
novices can get their feet wet, so to speak, with sophisticated,
high-resolution compact cameras that are fitted with excellent lenses
in an inexpensive but sturdy housing. The Olympus C-7070, for example,
has a housing available for $199 (www.olympusamerica.com). The outfit
is easily transported and makes a powerful travel companion for a
tropical vacation. You can come back with images that friends and
family will gasp at seeing.
The undersea environment is a foreign environment, and likewise,
photography underwater brings you face to face with a range of new
challenges. Thanks to the instant feedback of a digital camera, you can
quickly traverse the learning curve, but it’s much easier and faster
when you have a good teacher. PADI, the Professional Association of
Diving Instructors, has recently modified its underwater photography
specialty to a new Digital Underwater Photography course (www.padi.com).
If you’re thinking that you don’t really want to learn how to scuba
dive just to be able to learn underwater photography, don’t worry; the
class is open to snorkelers and scuba divers alike.
Even if you’re an accomplished photographer on land, we highly
recommend the Digital Underwater Photography class. There are a number
of tricks and tips you’ll learn to get you making sharp, colorful
photographs right from your first dive. And you’ll also learn how to
care for your gear properly and avoid any unfortunate accidents such as
a flooded housing.
Nothing makes you a better photographer like practice. In the film
era, practice underwater was essentially impossible. Any time you went
into the water with a camera, you were confined to 36 frames at most,
and reloading wasn’t really practical because you’d have to get to a
clean, dry area to disassemble the housing each time you wanted to put
in a fresh roll of film. And, of course, you never really knew if you
got any decent images until hours later when the film was processed.
There’s nothing as frustrating as looking through a stack of prints and
seeing that you had a slight underexposure that can’t be fixed.
The high capacity of memory cards and the instant feedback of a digital
camera have revolutionized anyone’s ability to shoot underwater. On a
recent trip to Tahiti, my camera was fitted with a blank memory card in
the morning, and that’s the card I used all day. I was using a Nikon
D200, which has a 10+ megapixel image sensor, and shooting in
high-quality JPEG mode. The camera was housed in a Sea&Sea DX-D200
housing (www.seaandsea.jp).
The 4 GB memory card held hundreds of photographs, which freed me to
concentrate on shooting instead of having to worry if I’d run out of
card space. At the time, it was my first real foray into underwater
shooting, so I made plenty of mistakes, but I was able to review each
image instantly on the camera’s LCD monitor and make an adjustment. The
result was that I was getting keeper photographs on my first day
beneath the waves. One of my traveling companions told me I was making
progress in those few days that would have taken years if I had been
using film.
The underwater realm is an extraordinary place, and it’s easy to become
overwhelmed by the scenery—you can literally miss the forest for the
trees. My local dive shop, Eco Dive Center in Los Angeles (www.ecodivecenter.com),
has been an important resource for both teaching me to use scuba gear
as well as teaching me about the environment. The shop is much more
than a place to buy gear. It’s the hub of the underwater community. In
addition to taking classes at the shop, I go there to learn about
underwater plants and wildlife and to ask questions about what I’ve
seen.
Whether you want to dive into scuba as a hobby or plan to do casual
snorkeling on a vacation, the camera is an ideal companion. Digital
cameras, advances in low-cost housings and high-capacity memory cards
give you the ability to become a good underwater photographer quickly,
and you’ll bring back stunning photos from your first treks into the
sea. Personally, it’s changed my life. I hope it changes yours!
