Diving Photography

FrankCastle

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Hi everyone, I am currently completing my PADI open water certificate and really want to try my hand at underwater photography. Does anyone have any experience of this or can recommend any dive trips/best clubs to join in UK?
 
Hi
Yep got experience in it, used to be a tdi mixed gas diver & take a camera with me, very, very difficult in anything but crystal clear waters, deffo need your flash mounting well to the side or the water particles, plancton just blow straight back to look like a snow storm.
Good luck with it though, have fun.
 
Forget photography for a while. Concentrate on controling your bouyancy instead. Underwater photography requires a great deal of control, even your breathing makes a vast difference. When your ready buy a Nikon coolpix compact and housing to start with. Use it in manual mode and in macro usuing flash. remember the closer to the subject the better and a wide angle focal length to eliminate/ minimise scatter from supended particles in the water. Best advise i can give is to learn to dive properly before even purchasing a camera, Its too easy to get into problems when youre concentrating on something else.
Take care
Glyn
 
Thanks for the replies, it is definitely something I want to get in to. Probably not in the immediate future but I'd like to start looking around so thanks for the info.

I imagine buoyancy can be tricky with all the equipment/camera housings!
 
Gonna agree with Glyn about getting your bouyancy right. I never tried underwater togging, but like most thigsa you can do whilst you're under, you'll not enjoy any of it it you're constantly fighting to stay put.

PADI do an underwater togging speciality course, and if you decide to do your AOW course I think you can do the first dive of that spec as part of it. That said, I did my AOW in 2005 and it may well have changed since then.

As for trips/clubs/shops etc I can advise you where NOT to go down here in Dorset, but it very much depends on where you are in the UK.
 
As others have said similar, the PADI OW course doesn't really prepare you for very much... Get out and go diving, lots!

U/W photography can be great fun but you need to be a good diver AND a good photographer at the same time.
The easiest U/W shots to try are wide-angle in clear water but beware, even clear water is full of specs if you fire a flash into it.
The other style is macro and this is where your bouyancy really needs to be spot on... You don't want to crash into whatever you're shooting, or hold your breath and suddenly float off to the surface with a burst lung!

Small compacts (if you can get one which shoots RAW) will do you fine for a while, otherwise the gear gets very large and bulky! My ikelite housing, dome port and strobes take up practically as much space as the rest of my gear!

Check out Yorkshire Divers for a good diving forum with a nice photography section (a number of members on TP too), DigiGreen for a uk u/w photography site and Wetpixel dor a US one. BSoUP are a British group devoted to U/W photography.
 
I can't reiterate enough what the others have said, LEARN TO DIVE FIRST.

There are two main reasons, 1) diving is ALL about buoyancy control and it is tricky, if you try to do photography at the same time you'll get good at neither. Once you have good buoyancy control you will take much better pictures. 2) UW photography gear isn't cheap so you'd better know you like diving before investing.

after the Open Water course you really won't have enough experience
 
Agree about getting the diving sorted first. You could always try film photography first as its going to be a bit cheaper than going digital. UK diving - lots of stuff in the water make it difficult but not impossible. Try shallow dives first, Mulberry harbour off Sth Coast is a wonderful dive.
Matt
 
If you want to try UK diving there are loads of great dive clubs around who will be your best way to get the experience you need in UK water... It's very different to warm water diving!

Matt or I can recommend lots if you need one- or join the Yorkshire Divers forum which is a bit like TP for diving...
 
Thanks for all the info - very helpful indeed. Not intending on starting proper UW photography until I've had much more diving experience but it's useful to get as much info beforehand.
 
And of course I will start with a decent compact. Not willing to shell out £1.5k on an SLR housing!
 
A lot of people I know have used Canon G# cameras with either the Canon or Ikelite housings - and I know Fuji have a surprisingly large following. I'm a bit out of date with the latest compacts so I'm not so sure about the models. I used a G9 when I was on a compact and loved it.

As long as it allows raw files and manual controls you're going to be fine with most cameras - the raw is important as the White-Balance underwater changes with depth.

Get a housing that's rated to 40-60m so that it doesn't become a limiting factor in your diving... I know PADI O/W only lets you go to 18m but AOW is 30m max and most other dive orgs will certify you to 50m fairly easily... most good uk wrecks are 30-60m deep.

Only expensive housings have ttl/flash ports on them but that's fine too- most UW photographers run their strobe (when you progress to an external strobe) on manual anyway and many of them can be triggered by fibre-optic slaves so you won't miss the ports.
 
Resently had to give up diving due to back injury.
Your getting great advice here. I would ad a few things.
You realy have to learn not to use your arms when diving with a camera. You will see you don't need to use them much. Well only one to control your BCD.
When you do your advance take the photography dive. With a good instructor then you will gain a lot of knowledge.

Get out there and dive. Its a great hobby and great if you can control yourself when taking photos. The most anoying thing are divers going up, down flapping when taking pictures.

Final bit snorkel a lot with your camera dive down and take shots. It will also help with your diving.
 
incapete said:
If you want to try UK diving there are loads of great dive clubs around who will be your best way to get the experience you need in UK water... It's very different to warm water diving!

Matt or I can recommend lots if you need one- or join the Yorkshire Divers forum which is a bit like TP for diving...
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Yorkshire divers is a great place to find trips and people to dive with. If you'd like to join a club then there are BSAC clubs across the country and should be at least one near you. Dont worry about not having a BSAC qualification, you should still be able to join and if you'd like to continue training with them in the future you can cross over.

Like everyone else has said though - get some experience just diving before you think of photography, it'll need excellent bouyancy control just for starters.
 
only thing I can add is get close to your subjects. Also understand the way water magnifies and filters light.

Everyone has said how important getting your diving right is - just add my vote to this as well. I buddied a fairly inexperienced photographer last summer - watching him run out of air, forget he had a buddy and somehow get to the surface (and then to hospital) from 25m was 'interesting'
 
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boyfalldown said:
only thing I can add is get close to your subjects. Also understand the way water magnifies and filters light.

Everyone has said how important getting your diving right is - just add my vote to this as well. I buddied a fairly inexperienced photographer last summer - watching him run out of air, forget he had a buddy and somehow get to the surface (and then to hospital) from 25m was 'interesting'
Click to expand...

Glad this isnt a dive forum or I'm pretty sure the statement above would land you some 'interesting' comments.
I'm hoping there's a lot more to it than your brief comment, I'm sure there's a good sentiment in there somewhere.

Matt
 
MatBin said:
Glad this isnt a dive forum or I'm pretty sure the statement above would land you some 'interesting' comments.
I'm hoping there's a lot more to it than your brief comment, I'm sure there's a good sentiment in there somewhere.

Matt
Click to expand...

really why? the point of the above post was that I had the mis-fortune to dive with someone who let his camera take over to the point where he endangered both his own and my safety, just by the action of completely ignoring me through out the dive, even to the point where it did put himself in considerable danger.
 
My own view is that if you take a camera on a dive you've just told your buddy you're both on solo dives and best treat it as such.

Slightly/wildly off topic - I dont have any issues with solo diving, done quite a few myself, very enjoyable and so long as everyone agrees to it before you hit the water its fine, of course its against Padi/Bsac rules and most skippers would be un-happy "if" they knew about it.
Some of the people I dived with made me feel that I would have been safer solo anyway, my regular buddy and I became very in-tune, had many great dives and it was a shame I gave up in some ways.

Matt
 
Lots of good heads'-up in this thread.

Have a look at this site; they are very well equipped and knowledgeable too :thumbs:; from compacts to SLR, take your pick.
 
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