Digital Photography Technology

Underwater photography is an exciting and challenging area of photography, as it offers a complete new world to photograph in. There is everything from a completely new variety of animals, fish, flowers, landscape, portraits of other photographers, and ship wrecks. There are colors which are gorgeous, the animal life is something like you have never seen, and just another world.

This all sounds like we would want to go there today, but there is a price to pay to go and photograph all that is in this new world. Underwater photography is a huge challenge.

The first thing is you have to be in good physical condition. Weight is a factor, condition of heart and lungs, and mental condition are all involved.  Take some courses in diving, get proficient, and decide if this is what you want to do before purchasing any equipment,

Once you have decided to go ahead with your trip to the new world, there is equipment to be purchased. If you already have a camera, there are waterproof enclosures that are custom made for certain types of cameras. They are expensive, but a camera that gets drowned in sea water is useless. Then there are underwater cameras that are water proof and ready to go, but will have some restrictions as to the dept that they can be used.

The major problem is light. The farther down you go, the darker it becomes, and also water absorbs certain colors, such as orange and red which is sunlight. Everything starts to appear green or blue in color and quickly fade away with distance.

These under water problems are solved by several techniques. One is to use a wide angle lens which will focus up close with a wide depth of field, or a macro lens. Most underwater photographers like to stay within 3 feet of their subject. The second technique is to use strobe flash which will restore the color to the subject.

Every situation while doing underwater photography will be different, and experience is the only way to learn. Take as many pictures as possible, and bracket the exposures. This will give three exposures, one normal and one over and under exposed. This gives more assurance of a good exposure, as it rather difficult to go back and take it over again.

Now that you have some basic information on underwater photography and underwater cameras, you will be rewarded with the photos you will take.