Wazee - July 2011

[jasondbaker]

Here are some shots I took at Wazee this past Saturday.  The visibility was a little lower than expected but I'm still happy with some of the pics.  Everything was taken with the tokina 10-17 fisheye lens.

[jasondbaker]

Anybody lose a shoe?

[Deep Thought]

Nice shots! That's what I am shooting for, and trying to get a dive in at Presque Isle but small craft warning today ;(  How deep and what aperture / shutter speed are you using.  Was this in Manual or Auto mode?

Ron

[jasondbaker]

Hi Ron, thanks.  All of these shots on my canon 7D have an aperture around f/9-f/11.  The tokina fisheye lens is nice and sharp around this range.  Shutter speeds were all at 1/125s and ISO was 200.  These shots were shallow -- around 20-30ft -- and I had nice sunlight overhead.  I still used my strobes to add some fill light.  When the thunderstorms came rolling in I had to bump the ISO up to 800.  The dive practically turned into a night dive due to the dark cloud cover. 

I shoot everything in manual mode.  It's really the best way to get good underwater photos.  The auto mode on dslr's tends to get really confused setting exposures underwater.  I used auto mode during the first week I owned the camera and I haven't touched it since. If I'm shooting wide angle then I'll enter the water with the camera set at f/8, 1/125s, ISO 100 (I programmed this as a custom mode).  I'll start adjusting ISO to get the exposure right, up to about ISO 800.  Then I'll open up the lens aperture.  And finally, if forced to I'll start slowing down the shutter speed.  I'm hesitant to slow the shutter speed past 1/80 while diving. Fortunately the strobes help to minimize that issue.  If I were doing deep wrecks I would seriously consider using a tripod system.  That would allow me to use a much longer shutter speed.  Of course that might not work well with divers in the frame -- which are helpful to show the scale.  It would also allow me to take multiple exposures and do some of the cool HDR stuff.