Lots of advice on using compact cameras underwater will tell you the trick to it all is using the white balance. The basic technique is to carry a white card, such as a diving slate, and then when at depth, set the white balance on the card.

However, I think a lot of nonsense is made of white balance for underwater photography. It is not a cure-all for problems of shooting through blue water. The short way to describe the issue is that you cannot put in something that was never there.

You can’t get these colours using white balance!

Many people will assume that using the WB underwater will put the colours back it. It won’t. What it will do is reduce some of the blueness, but it isn’t going to put in colours that are not there in the first place. The water sucks out the red light, and unless you add that red light back in, then it will not miraculously reappear. I have seen some nice shots in shallow water where the WB has enhanced the shot, but taking your camera deeper than 10m will mean a significant loss of red light. I think that’s fine. Blue is good. The water is, after all blue. Here is an example of why blue is good:

Yes there are some amazingly coloured fish out there. So if that’s what you want to do then a strobe is a good investment. Unfortunately the small, basic strobes have only a small coverage. It is therefore only suitable for macro work and not wide angle photography.

In terms of price range and quality there are primarily two choices: Compact or SLR

Underwater Housings for Compact Cameras

A combination of good, cheap digital cameras and low cost acrylic housings has meant that underwater photography is open to most divers. Even ten years ago, underwater photography was largely restricted to those with the budget, dedication and patience to do it. Digital has largely negated that and opened underwater photography up to anyone with a reasonable budget. And that is a great thing.

Underwater Compact vs Underwater SLR

Is an SLR better than a compact for underwater photography? The answer to that is ‘not necessarily’. There are lots of advantages to using compacts:

All compacts are capable of creating great images, as good as anything on an SLR. This has been proven on a number of occasions where photos taken with underwater compact housings have won competitions.

Compact is convenient: lugging around a large SLR housing and strobe is a pain sometimes. It’s a pain to take abroad, and weighing in at 15kg that can be all of my luggage allowance. It’s a pain to set up on the boat, and it can be a paint to swim around with it underwater. So what happens is I only take the SLR when I am sure of good underwater photography conditions. The compact, on the other hand, can be shoved in my BC pocked and it’s there whenever I want it.

Small is good! For action-type shots and good compact can often be easier than an SLR. Trying to wield the massive housing around after a pod of dolphins is not easy.

Screens rather than viewfinders: I am experienced at using the view-finder on my SLR underwater housing, but it’s not always convenient. The screen on the back of a compact makes viewing, and therefore getting the shot much easier.

The Right Camera

Or I should say, the right camera for what? I’m sure there are people out there who will say that you shouldn’t get a camera unless it shoots at 12mega pixels or more, because the printed quality will be poor. That’s fine (essential in fact) if you are aiming to publish your work in a magazine, but in truth, most people aren’t doing underwater photography for that. I would say that most people will publish their photos online, email them to friends and maybe do one or two prints on a home photo printer. So, be realistic about what you want it for. If all you will ever do is use the pictures online then 6 mega pixels will do you fine. It will still print out nicely at A4.

The Lens

Ge the best quality lens you can afford. This is the key to any photography, especially underwater. Most compact manufacturers produce good lenses these days, but compare reviews to find the best.

Wide Angle, Zoom and Macro

In essence there are only two types of underwater photography: wide angle and macro. Wide angle is for scenes (wrecks, reefs etc), divers and large marine animals, and macro is for everything else!

A good example of where wide angle can get a shot even in poor vis and low light:

Close is not close enough

The problem with underwater photography is the water itself. Even in the best conditions light does not penetrate very far and there are always particles. The only way to shoot underwater is to get in close. A good wide angle allows you to get very close, but shoot the whole scene. At a 1:1 (ie film size) ratio than 20-24mm is right for underwater work. I use a 12mm lens on my my SLR.

If you’re not shooting a scene, then it has to be Macro, and it is important to find a lens that will get you within a few cms of the subject. In reality when choosing a compact and underwater housing, it is likely to be a compromise – decide what kind of photography is right for you, and go for the wide or macro lens accordingly.

Lack of light?

Not having enough light is always a problem with underwater photography. Unless you’re shooting in the brightest tropical conditions, you may well be using an ISO of 400+. On that basis, choose a compact camera that can cope well in low light – that means good handling of ‘noise’ in those conditions.

Accessories

I have already stated the importance of a good wide angle. There are a number of reasonable wide angle lenses that can be fitted externally to underwater housings. They can be quite good, but fairly pricey. On the whole, I would consider carefully before going this route:

As an extra lens they reduce the amount of light coming in to the camera. They add extra optics thus reducing the quality and detail. Having said that they are capable of creating decent images. However if you are serious about ultra wide angle underwater photography then I would recommend that you start to look at the SLR option.

Strobes (flash) are another accessory. At no time would you ever use the flash on your camera for underwater shots. The small diffusers that they put on the front of some underwater housings are utterly useless. Without an external strobe, your shots will be natural light. Which I think, is fine. At least 50% of my underwater photos are taken without flash. Available light photography can produce some amazing results. Another alternative is to use white balance on your camera. I’m not convinced by this and I have some strong views on WB underwater here.

So to sum up, consider the following points with your compact and underwater housing

What do I really want the camera for?

Wide angle or macro? Online or print? Low light? And of course, how much do I want to spend?

Even then, it can be a long exposure: half a second is not unusual. The solution is to take a tripod. Not the easiest of things to carry underwater, and of course the bouyancy means it is not as solid as a land tripod. The way I have dealt with this is to buy a cheap tripod – not matter how carefully you wash it, eventually the sea water will corrode it. Jessops do some decent ones for less than £35. I don’t need any panning, just a solid head that can be locked off. To get the weight to hold it down I fill the legs with lead shot. You basically pop the rubber ends off the legs, and empty around 2-3kg of lead shot evenly across the three legs. I then glue the rubber ends back on.

This picture is a result of using the tripod:

It was taken in Narvic, in the Norwegian Arctic Circle. It wasn’t that deep a shot – around 20m – but the water wasn’t that clear. I usually ‘side mount’ the tripod in much the same way as a stage cylinder. That way it sits nicely under my arm when I’m swimming. I usually extend the tripod before I go in the water, so all I have to do is open the legs and lock it off.

I was using my Nik V with a 15mm Nikkonos lens. I set the tripod close the the nose of the plane and got my buddy to swim forward. The exposure was around 1 second. You will notice that there is some movement from the diver. This effect was deliberate – I like the fact that the plane is clear, but the diver is cleary moving.

You can see more natural light and tripod photos in the coldwater section of my site.

After a lot of anguish, I went digital around five years ago. And in doing so I invested in Seacam, which in my view is easily the best housing ever made. They are simply beautiful. Even though they are only tested to 80m, I knew that something as well made as the seacam could easily go deeper. And it did. The deepest I took it was 135m on a wreck in Scotland. It worked well. The only problem was the switches on the strobe. For that I use the Subtonic. I had borrowed one a year or two before I bought it. Having used the Sea and Sea strobes for a few years, I could see that the Subtronic was vastly superior. There’s nothing basically wrong with the Sea and Sea strobes, however I managed to implode one once at 120m. I thought that my HP hose had gone on the rebreather, but the lack of bubbles suggested the problem was elsewhere. It was. The implosion had forced the front of the strobe out through the back. Suffice to say that was the end of that!

The trick with taking any camera deep is simply this: choose a setting on the surface or in shallow water, and when you’re deep just press the shutter. Do not change any of the settings. As soon as you start moving knobs etc at depth you risk the o-rings trapping and flooding. Apart from anything else, there isn’t the time, or the inclination to start messing with settings. Experience will tell you the best settings to choose – for me it was 400-1600 ISO and f5.6. After that, it was really a case of taking the photos and hoping for the best!

The principle here is this: let the diver do the lighting. I got the idea from a (well-known) underwater camera-man who told me that he hated using lights, and where possible he filmed a diver lighting the scene. The picture of the Hispania (below) is a classic example. The diver has this amazing HID torch. He told me it had the equivalent power of a car headlamp. So I thought, why not let him light the subject and turn off my strobe. The result, as you see, is that the rudder of the Hispania (a wreck in the Sound of Mull in Scotland) is well-lit by the diver. I think that had I used the strobe it would have actually flattened the image. The eariness of this picture is enhanced by the beam of light from the diver.

With over fifteen years of underwater photographic experience I hope that I can bring my knowledge to this blog. As with everyone, I have my specialisms – generally wrecks but also caves and canyons, and almost always deep shots. To take these images I have developed my own particular techniques. I’m sure other people have different ways of doing things, and they may be better. All I can say is that my methods work for me!

You can find my portfolio at picturesunderwater.com