Comment posted Equipment Needed For Taking Underwater Pictures by wupierto.
Rubbish. A disposable will be OK if you’re only snorkeling, but the photo quality royally sucks (underwater only). I tried using 30(?) meter disposables on 10 dives in Cozumel and NO underwater photos were even a little acceptable.
You reference an instructor, so we can assume that you are diving. Most budget conscious divers go to Leisure Pro for their non-life-supporting accessories, but even there you will see housings aren’t cheap. Best bet is to hold off on photography until you can drop the $200 on a good, reliable housing for your digital cam.
Rules- Always be aware of your surroundings. You and your buddies safety is first, getting a shot of the mermaid is a distant second.
It’s all about the light. Read up on how to photograph underwater without a strobe (the Net is peppered with articles). If by ‘rules’ you meant ‘laws’ regarding photographing underwater, the answer is “if you can see it, you can photograph it” (unless diving Area 51).
Good luck!
wupierto also commented
- If you want great pictures underwater buy the underwater camera,don’t take a risk on breaking yours.If your only going to take a few underwater pictures just get a underwater dispoable camera.
- I would use a disposable, but you can buy probably buy a housing to fit your digital. Housings work great and are watertight. Most underwater pictures suffer from lack of lighting. It gets darker the farther you go under, BUT most the colourful stuff is more towards the surface anyway.
- I’ve used the disposable underwater cameras, they work ok for snapshots but if you want quality images, you’re better off either getting a good underwater housing for your camera or buying a nicer camera intended for underwater use.
There are some point-and-shoot digital camera that can be used underwater up to a certain depth, they do a pretty good job, better than a disposable at least.
The thing about underwater photography though is that you’ll really want an off-camera strobe to get the best image possible. If you use the flash that’s on-camera, you get lots of light spots on your images from the flash reflecting off of little things in the water.
You might want to see if you can find a used Nikonos. They’re Nikon’s 35mm SLR cameras made specifically for underwater photography.
One other suggestion, once you get a camera try to find somewhere to practice before you go out into the ocean, underwater photography is quite a bit more difficult than photographing things on land. A swimming pool is a good place to start off before you head out into open water. In the last photography class I took we spent one class period in a swimming pool attempting to do underwater photography, it was a lot of fun but way more difficult that you would think, I know it would have been a lot harder in the ocean. - Someone in your diving club should know all of this and hands-on is the best way to learn.
As you dive deeper, you loose the red light so the images start to look cyan in colour. The only way around this is to use flash on the camera.
The camera used for years was the Nikonos and it is still one of the best.
You should be able to find a housing for your digial, but they sometimes cost more than the camera itself.
You will have to do your own search on the web to find a housing that will work with your model camera - I would only buy an ‘underwater camera’ if I was SERIOUS about taking ‘underwater photos’ and a ‘professional level’ photographer. Since you are just wanting some ‘cool vacation pictures’ I’d say by the ‘underwater disposables’ (get at LEAST 5, because you will want to take LOADS of pictures, and get at least ‘half’ of the ‘right’ …) and then go diving and ‘shoot, shoot, shoot’ … if you have access to a computer while on your trip, you can ‘download’ the pictures and know what you ‘did’ to take the best ones, and do that again the next time you go diving. GOOD LUCK!
Recent comments by wupierto
- Can You Help Me Select A “fast” Compact Digital Camera?
No, the shutter speed has nothing to do with the experience you are referring to. There are three things you can measure that give you an estimate of how “quick-responding” a camera feels to the user:
1. The power-on time. The time it takes from the moment you press the On button, to the moment it’s ready to take the first picture.
2. The shutter lag. Measured from the moment you press the shutter release, to the moment it actually captures the picture.
3. The shot-to-shot time. This is what Floyd G is referring to in one of your other answers.
I think the most important measurement in your case is number 2 above. Actually, there are two ways to measure shutter lag. The first is the total time it takes the camera to focus on the subject and then take the picture. The second is the time it takes just to take the picture, after you have pre-focused the camera by pushing the shutter release half-way. If you are just a casual point-and-shooter, then the total time is what’s important to you.
You usually won’t find the shutter lag mentioned in the manufacturer’s specifications, except where a short shutter lag time is one of the selling features of the camera. Instead, you should look at reviews such as www.dpreview.com.
My recommendation for a camera with a short shutter lag time is the Fujifilm FinePix F30. Also, most cameras by Ricoh are also good in this respect. In fact, most of today’s cameras have lower shutter lag times than cameras of a few years ago. There are still a few that have long shutter lag, so be careful. - Can You Help Me Select A “fast” Compact Digital Camera?
No.
What you quoted for the Kodak camera was the ‘shutter’ speed. That is, the amount of time the camera takes in light to the sensor. Modern digital cameras no longer have a classic film shutter, but the name carries on.
The important variables in how fast a digital camera can cycle through saving images to the memory card is the speed of the computer chip in the camera (a hard thing to find out about) and the type and speed of memory card the camera uses.
Generally speaking, the more complex and large the image size is, the more processing power you’ll need to process and save the image.
I now use Olympus digital cameras due to the price and the general quality of the hardware and image results. Their memory cards come in different ‘speeds’ as well, allowing large RAW images to save to memory as fast as possible.
When I shoot an 11 megabyte RAW format, it can take six seconds to save, but that’s offset by the ultra fine quality of the finished image.
Good luck with your choice! - Can You Help Me Select A “fast” Compact Digital Camera?
Sony cybershot…..above 6.mega pixel
Canon also ok..8.1 pixel - Can You Help Me Select A “fast” Compact Digital Camera?
Sony Cyber-Shot DSC-W5 5.1-Megapixel Digital Camera – Fast and Easy to Use
The camera is extremely fast in operation. The camera takes less than a second to power itself on in either review or shooting mode. It feels almost instantaneous. It can capture images at about 1.2-1.7 per second in burst mode. In single-frame mode, the camera could snap pictures as fast as I could push the shutter release button – about one a second. The focusing takes much less than a second and the shutter lag (the time between the moment you push the button and the moment when the picture is taken), when pre-focused, is almost unnoticeable.
Recommendation: I recommend Sony Cyber-Shot DSC-W5 if you want a cool yet capable camera with 5.1-megapixel resolution and huge LCD screen that produces excellent photos with print sizes of up 11×14 inches. It is extremely fast and easy to use. - Buying Camcorder Or Digital Camera?
you should get a digital camera because you can take pictures with you newborn that are high-quality and you can take videos also. go to wal-mart or best buy or where ever you go and ask how long much video memory is there. if you can’t find a digital camera that has enough video than definitely get the video camcorder. you don’t want to to mess up your wife’s video. if you do you’ll be paying it off for the rest of your life.
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{ 9 comments… read them below or add one }
Rubbish. A disposable will be OK if you’re only snorkeling, but the photo quality royally sucks (underwater only). I tried using 30(?) meter disposables on 10 dives in Cozumel and NO underwater photos were even a little acceptable.
You reference an instructor, so we can assume that you are diving. Most budget conscious divers go to Leisure Pro for their non-life-supporting accessories, but even there you will see housings aren’t cheap. Best bet is to hold off on photography until you can drop the $200 on a good, reliable housing for your digital cam.
Rules- Always be aware of your surroundings. You and your buddies safety is first, getting a shot of the mermaid is a distant second.
It’s all about the light. Read up on how to photograph underwater without a strobe (the Net is peppered with articles). If by ‘rules’ you meant ‘laws’ regarding photographing underwater, the answer is “if you can see it, you can photograph it” (unless diving Area 51).
Good luck!
Check out the FujiFilm FinePix F30 Camera. They are supposed to be good underwater.
I’ve always used the disposable ones and have had some great pictures!
you should get digtal underwater camera it’s great you can take picture underwater clearly i got one is work great
I would only buy an ‘underwater camera’ if I was SERIOUS about taking ‘underwater photos’ and a ‘professional level’ photographer. Since you are just wanting some ‘cool vacation pictures’ I’d say by the ‘underwater disposables’ (get at LEAST 5, because you will want to take LOADS of pictures, and get at least ‘half’ of the ‘right’ …) and then go diving and ‘shoot, shoot, shoot’ … if you have access to a computer while on your trip, you can ‘download’ the pictures and know what you ‘did’ to take the best ones, and do that again the next time you go diving. GOOD LUCK!
Someone in your diving club should know all of this and hands-on is the best way to learn.
As you dive deeper, you loose the red light so the images start to look cyan in colour. The only way around this is to use flash on the camera.
The camera used for years was the Nikonos and it is still one of the best.
You should be able to find a housing for your digial, but they sometimes cost more than the camera itself.
You will have to do your own search on the web to find a housing that will work with your model camera
I’ve used the disposable underwater cameras, they work ok for snapshots but if you want quality images, you’re better off either getting a good underwater housing for your camera or buying a nicer camera intended for underwater use.
There are some point-and-shoot digital camera that can be used underwater up to a certain depth, they do a pretty good job, better than a disposable at least.
The thing about underwater photography though is that you’ll really want an off-camera strobe to get the best image possible. If you use the flash that’s on-camera, you get lots of light spots on your images from the flash reflecting off of little things in the water.
You might want to see if you can find a used Nikonos. They’re Nikon’s 35mm SLR cameras made specifically for underwater photography.
One other suggestion, once you get a camera try to find somewhere to practice before you go out into the ocean, underwater photography is quite a bit more difficult than photographing things on land. A swimming pool is a good place to start off before you head out into open water. In the last photography class I took we spent one class period in a swimming pool attempting to do underwater photography, it was a lot of fun but way more difficult that you would think, I know it would have been a lot harder in the ocean.
I would use a disposable, but you can buy probably buy a housing to fit your digital. Housings work great and are watertight. Most underwater pictures suffer from lack of lighting. It gets darker the farther you go under, BUT most the colourful stuff is more towards the surface anyway.
If you want great pictures underwater buy the underwater camera,don’t take a risk on breaking yours.If your only going to take a few underwater pictures just get a underwater dispoable camera.