Farnes Pics

[richarddbarker]

Just a few shots from my recent trip to the Farnes...

Generally I seem to get very low f.stops (1.8) and slow shutter speeds (1/30) if I rely on the auto modes for shutter/aperture (camera is Oly 5050 btw). I've been a bit reluctant to get stuck into the manual controls. Not sure why the camera selects these options though as most of the pictures turn out to be a bit overexposed and I then have to balance them on the PC. I tried tweaking the metering options but I found it was worse when I went to spot metering so I've set it back to ESP.

As you can see there were plenty off fish around but the depth of field is a bit disappointing (think that's the technical term).




This is the engine winch on the Britannia, laying in around 25m off Crumstone. It's the first time I've done this dive and it's very nice, with plenty of wreckage/life to see.



The water seems to be mobbed with jellies at the moment. At least they stay nice a still while you photograph them.

[Cussy]

Nice photos.

My advice would be not to use P (prorgam) setting. I use A (aperture), means you can set it to the amount of depth of field you want. This is especially useful for macro work where you want small aperatures (high f number) in order to get decent focus.

As to why the camera gives you those settings, well its to get round camera shake. The larger the aperature the quicker the shutter speed. If you use A, you can set it to the best option for a required shutter speed, or just use S and select a shutter of 1/60th or 1/30th. Changing the aperature will change the colour of the background, so you can achieve good effects with black backgrounds. Also remember that these digitals are designed to work best in perfect sunshine. I've set my Oly to an EV of -0.7, cuts out the over exposure. Underwater you may also want to set to a higher ISO (either 200 or maybe 400, although latter may get noisy). I've also found spot metering tricky in teh water.

I would suggest you take the camera somewhere on land in pretty poor light and see what the different settings change in the picture. Then try the same in the water, take 10 shots of the same thing bracketing. I've just come back from a 3 day photo trip where I shot 400 photos, I think I've finally worked out what does what.

Rob

[Scubamad]

Excellent photos!!

[richarddbarker]

Thanks for the comments. I'm off to the Farnes this weekend so I'm going to have a play with some of the manual settings, fingers crossed.

[John N]

Nice pics.

Have you read through this link?
http://www.yorkshire-divers.co.uk/fo...ad.php?t=15415
Some good tips and links.

Light is your problem. Do you have an external strobe or use the internal flash?

Try and get to grips with the manual settings as they will give you more control.
You can set 'custom' settings so you can estimate the settings you will need topside and then tweak them underwater using exposure +/- or other controls.

Apart from that, try and get as low as possible and shoot up. The light from the sun will often give you a bit more of an option to shoot at a reasonable speed (1/60 or faster) and still maintain a reasonable depth of field.

Good luck and keep at it.

[Norseman]

Very good job indeed!

All of a sudden I found out that the only way to be in total control is, like others said above, to use Manual setting. It doesn't take long until you find out what works and what doesn't.
Try shooting at F4 and 1/50 and see what happens. I find that unless you're taking photos of moving fish you can get as low as 1/30 or 25 because your movements are slowed down under water. Which means that above 10 meters you may actually get to a nice depth of field.

I find that once you're coming down towards 20 meters you're basicly either lucky or an INCREDIBLY slow diver if you're getting by without a tripod or something to support your camera if you're using just ambient light.

Yesterday at 42 meters I was getting a stern-shot of the wreck I was on. Used a tripod, had A-priority and plenty of red whitebalance, I was all set. Turned out that on the 5060 with A-setting if it gets dark enough it goes directly to 2 sec exposure. Which is too long. I was kind of aiming for half second with an F4,5 but found no way to change this within my time scope (photo-ho was hanging there eager to explore the wreck)
Well, in my narked state I had to give up the attempt and get up to around 30 meters to sort out which setting to use.

Kyrre

[Woz]

I have found with my cheapo setup that the Auto mode is a complete waste of time- it alway over exposes the shots and whites out bits of it. So I use it in manual mode and take lots of shots. In macro mode with an external flash I get some shots I am pretty happy with. As for ambient light shots, I need a dive that has some viz first... and I must remember to put fully charged batts into my flash. Poo.