Wide Angle Underwater

I find macro easuier to shoot in that I can have much more control over the lighting.

Any particular kind of wide angle you like to see?

Here are some of my wide angle shots.  I'd have to say I'm only just now getting use to it, and so I think I'll have better results in the future.  I used to not use it much, favoring my macro setup, but on my last dive trip I used it for several days straight.  (One of my strobes failed, so I figured I'd get more experience with shooting ambient with wide angle).

I do find it more difficult to use, but partly because I had perhaps the wrong impression of how to use it compared to my macro lens.   Mixed strobe/ambient lighting is a problem, as is dynamic range in ambient if not shallow and sunny.

I also had issues with the edge IQ in all of my wide shots until I added a Sea and Sea Internal Correction Lens to my 16-35.  Made a world of difference.

Some sample wides.

Last trip where I used the 16-35 a lot mostly showed me what I didn't know.   Hoping for improvements in the future.

It's true that many times I'm shooting at 35mm and wishing I had 50mm or 70mm.  It's easier shooting subjects in isolation than in context.  Sometimes I just don't have the right subjects, or am not close enough, but maybe I just don't see the right angles.

Here are some near the wide end.

An attempt at an over-under shot.   Hard to do when the camera weighs 30 pounds out of the water.

I've tried a bit of close-focus wide angle, but the best I can do with the 16-35 isn't very impressive.  I worry a lot about scratching the dome port as I've banged it into more than one subject when I didn't think I was that close.

Mostly I'm not that good at wide angle, but just in this thread I've learned something - my 16mm shots turn out to be more interesting than my 35mm.   Then too, an awful lot of my 35mm shots are frustrated 50 and 60mm shots.  I'm going to explore the wide end more, and basically start by having at least one element close to the camera.

White balance is an issue if I try to use my strobes.  This last trip in Roatan I got much more practice shooting wide angle because I lost one of the strobes in the first few days of the trip.   I had already shot everything in sight with the 105mm for a few days, plus the previous trips, so I resolved to stick with the 16-35 for several days, regardless of conditions.  Since I was down a strobe anyway, it was more pressure to shoot ambient with wide angle.

Once I went to ambient, my ISO settings quickly became an issue - how high is too high? For the way I shoot and post-process, going up to 800 is a real struggle.  I lose so much dynamic range that I can't make the shot come out the way I want.   I then practiced setting lower limits, but if my upper limit is only 200, I underexpose too much.   Going below 1/160th is generally going to give me blurry fish and some corals, so I sometimes just plain run out of effective lighting.

kelpdiver wrote:

PHXAZCRAIG wrote:

Mostly I'm not that good at wide angle, but just in this thread I've learned something - my 16mm shots turn out to be more interesting than my 35mm. Then too, an awful lot of my 35mm shots are frustrated 50 and 60mm shots. I'm going to explore the wide end more, and basically start by having at least one element close to the camera.

the first two rules for UW composition is get closer and shoot up. When you're at the far end of the range, you're off on one. If you don't have a choice (shark won't come closer), it is what it is, but when you're on a fixed WA, you 'zoom with your fins.' Lighting has more potential, and the composition isn't as flat, feels more imersive.

I can't get close enough sometimes - but other times I just want more lens.   Here is an example, though it is an example of trying to use a wide angle lens for a macro subject.

The problem I have with getting closer is the dome hitting the subject or rocks and coral around it.   In this shot I was basically pressing the glass against the anemone trying to resolve the tiny shrimp:

White balance is an issue if I try to use my strobes. This last trip in Roatan I got much

If you're within 5ft of the foreground subject, the strobes should light enough that you can use it for the WB, the background should work itself out. At an extreme, you can mask the foreground and then fiddle with the background.

So far I'm avoiding using masking, partly due to not having Photoshop and working with Lightroom Classic.

Once I went to ambient, my ISO settings quickly became an issue - how high is too high? For the way I shoot and post-process, going up to 800 is a real struggle. I lose so much dynamic range that I can't make the shot come out the way I want.

If you're ultimately going to print, you have a lot more range than you need, but yeah, I understand the dilemma for TV/monitor displayed content. But you can/should do some A/B experiments where you shoot the same dive with a mix of 800 and 200 and compare the results you can get in post.

I almost never print now.   Mostly I shoot for the web, because I shoot for myself and I prefer the ease and accessibility of viewing my shots from a web server.  But one reason is that my Epson P600 is clogged, and I dread the expense of pumping ink through it in a vain attempt to get it working again.   The last time I printed I did a bunch of photos of my late wife Connie for her funeral.   As I printed the last photo (of a bunch), the printer clogged one of the colors, and it wasn't the same after that.  I didn't have the heart to print again either.  That was almost 3 years ago.

I then practiced setting lower limits, but if my upper limit is only 200, I underexpose too much. Going below 1/160th is generally going to give me blurry fish and some corals, so I sometimes just plain run out of effective lighting.

I think this is where the high MPs starts to work against you. With the MPs in the upper teens, I can shoot a lot at 1/100 and maybe even 1/80 if I can swim parallel to the subject. Though this is a pain point for canons in how they handle A mode with or without auto ISO. No way to enforce a minimum shutter speed. Makes you want to go to shutter priority, but then A meanders. Manual is too rigid. Bit frustrating when doing a lot of depth changes.

My preference with macro and strobes is to live at ISO 64 and fully light what I want.   With ambient, not so much, and I have a lot of lighting challenges.   The way I post-process is very intensive (in my opinion), and I very very quickly see the limits of dynamic range contracting as I up the ISO.

Of course at some depths there just isn't enough color, and no amount of post-processing seems to make these images look decent.  I have done a bit of fiddling with ISO limits during a dive, but for the last year or so I've tried to just do a whole dive or a whole day using one setting and then seeing how a variety of subjects work within that.  I've tried setting the ISO to manual and to auto, and in manual I've tried 64, 100, 200, 320, 400, 800, 1000 and some way-too-high settings as well.

Here's a shot at ISO 320 that I only kept because of the Purple Crowned Sea Goddesses in there (and the fact that *I* found them when the divemaster had missed them).

One win, however, with your 45MP plus a wide fisheye - you don't really need to look at the viewfinder - you can just aim and shoot, and do a little bit of cropping to get the composition right. Esp helpful for the shark dives.+

I suppose that is true, but I don't find it much effort to use the viewfinder.  I bought a nice high-eyepoint viewpiece (Nauticam 180 degree viewfinder, $1320) that makes it easy to see the whole image through my mask.  In addition, especially with macro, I use the viewfinder pressed against my mask as a third point of contact to stabilize the camera.

I'm going to Socorro this weekend for 5 days of WA - we'll see what sort of tricks and jump settings I can come to. Mantas present a challenge- the all black ones have no sharp edges to focus on, and the mixed color ones tend to have fuzzy transitions between black and white. The gills are great underneath. Strobe power is a different problem that is common with sharks as well - if you're shooting the white underbelly, you probably want to be on the lower side, but shooting the top darker side, you do want the power to get that metallic sheen.

Sounds fascinating.  I hope you'll post a bunch of shots (and explanations for shooting and processing) afterwards.

I love Roatan, but I need to get to some different dive sites.   Harder to do now that my dive-buddy wife is gone.   Also, I'm now 66 years old, and diving in Roatan is pretty easy, which is why I keep going back.  Everything at the Reef House Resort tends to work in my favor - empty dive boat, warm conditions, usually very little current, easy (or used to be) travel to/from, and inexpensive.  But I'm just getting the same shots year after year, though I do think I'm improving in certain ways from the practice.

A black water Hammerhead dive in Molokai last year showed me some limits to my abilities due to age, and after a rough dive I was the only diver who didn't make the second dive.  Then too I was puking from seasickness due to the very rough conditions.

I'd love to dive Bonaire, but I don't think it's the right choice for me to go and try to do it alone, particularly shore diving with a big camera rig.

kelpdiver wrote:

I think this is where the high MPs starts to work against you. With the MPs in the upper teens, I can shoot a lot at 1/100 and maybe even 1/80 if I can swim parallel to the subject. Though this is a pain point for canons in how they handle A mode with or without auto ISO. No way to enforce a minimum shutter speed. Makes you want to go to shutter priority, but then A meanders. Manual is too rigid. Bit frustrating when doing a lot of depth changes.

I think my Nikon has a pretty good system - I can set both lower and upper limits - but I'm not sure what limits to set on either end.

One win, however, with your 45MP plus a wide fisheye - you don't really need to look at the viewfinder - you can just aim and shoot, and do a little bit of cropping to get the composition right. Esp helpful for the shark dives.

I missed the part about fisheye.   Right now I don't have one, other than my old, trusty 10.5 F2.8 DX.   I've though about the new 8-15mm, but I tend not to like fisheye that much.   As has been said before, fisheye shots are like tequila shots.  A few are nice, but too many make you sick.  I don't want a whole dive to be fisheye.

I really miss a normal zoom.   But at least I've made up for the lack of a decent macro capability with all my years of point-n-shoots.   4 years with the D810 and 105macro, plus another year now with the D850 have given me tons of close-up and macro shots.  One reason I've been wanting to do more wide angle lately.

PHXAZCRAIG wrote:

I love Roatan, but I need to get to some different dive sites. Harder to do now that my dive-buddy wife is gone. Also, I'm now 66 years old, and diving in Roatan is pretty easy, which is why I keep going back. Everything at the Reef House Resort tends to work in my favor - empty dive boat, warm conditions, usually very little current, easy (or used to be) travel to/from, and inexpensive. But I'm just getting the same shots year after year, though I do think I'm improving in certain ways from the practice.

What kind of pelagic and macro subjects do you normally get in Roatan?

daveco2 wrote:

PHXAZCRAIG wrote:

I love Roatan, but I need to get to some different dive sites. Harder to do now that my dive-buddy wife is gone. Also, I'm now 66 years old, and diving in Roatan is pretty easy, which is why I keep going back. Everything at the Reef House Resort tends to work in my favor - empty dive boat, warm conditions, usually very little current, easy (or used to be) travel to/from, and inexpensive. But I'm just getting the same shots year after year, though I do think I'm improving in certain ways from the practice.

What kind of pelagic and macro subjects do you normally get in Roatan?

I don't see much in the pelagic line, if by that you mean 'large fish'. I see the occasional Nurse Shark, but that's it. I have heard that you can see Hammerheads, but not until the water cools down in November. I don't like cold water, so I've not been there to see Hammerheads.

Except once in 2008, the first time I went. I took in the famous Shark Dive of Roatan.

If you want to see sharks there, this is the dive to go on. Not much of a dive though. You descend a rope to 70 feet, then 6 divers kneel and 6 divers stand behind them. Behind all is a coral 'wall', which helps tame the current and keeps you from having to constantly turn to see behind. The sharks (black-tipped reef sharks, all female) swim in a circular pattern around a bait bucket. At some point you may get permission to swim with them in that circle, which is what is going on in the shot above.

Other than those sharks, you can very occasionally see a whale shark in the area I normally dive. I've not see one though.

Macro: a whole other story. LOTS of macro opportunities in Roatan. Browse through my Roatan web pages here to see them: http://www.cjcphoto.net/

PHXAZCRAIG wrote:

Macro: a whole other story. LOTS of macro opportunities in Roatan. Browse through my Roatan web pages here to see them: http://www.cjcphoto.net/

Wow, you really do have a large library of great shots.   Do you find the macro on your own or does the resort help out with a spotter?  And do they give you enough time to get the shot?

The inside shot of your D850 case is impressive.  I can see why it costs so much.  Is that a UW-Technics TTL converter nestled in the top?

daveco2 wrote:

PHXAZCRAIG wrote:

Macro: a whole other story. LOTS of macro opportunities in Roatan. Browse through my Roatan web pages here to see them: http://www.cjcphoto.net/

Wow, you really do have a large library of great shots. Do you find the macro on your own or does the resort help out with a spotter? And do they give you enough time to get the shot?

I go to the Reef House Resort during their down month (September) where I am usually the only guest at the place.  On the weekends or at odd times there may be a few other divers doing some day dives on the boat, usually only for the two morning dives.  Most of the time I have the boat and divemaster to myself.

One big reason I keep going to Roatan is the divemaster at that resort.  David is phenomenal at finding things, big to very small.  He must have phenomenal eyesight.  He has also got over 20,000 dives in at the dive sites in the area.  (I've now been to at least 37 different sites and followed him on 170 dives.)

There is a lot of stuff to see on a health reef in Roatan, and it helps to have been to the dive site with seahorses over 1000 times to know just where to look.

I'm generally given enough time to get my shots, especially for something special, when I'm the only diver.   David and I dive well together, and we tend to do longish dives - never less than 60 minutes, and that includes 20-30 minutes down around 80 feet on almost every dive.   So there is a bit of time constraint, but not when it really matters.

Here are three shots from the end of a single dive where we had a number of other divers along and David was pointing to stuff on the way back to the boat.

Without David I would have 10% of the shots I've gotten there.

David pointing to a Slender Filefish

We had finned over acres of this stuff when David stopped and signaled us to see this Lettuce Sea Slug.

Nudibrach

The inside shot of your D850 case is impressive. I can see why it costs so much. Is that a UW-Technics TTL converter nestled in the top?

No, it's the non-TTL trigger that comes with the Nauticam case for a D850.  Have to have something there since the D850 has no pop-up flash.   My Nauticam case for my D810 only has an optical prism to direct the pop-up flash.

The divemaster in Roatan has told me a few stories about other cameramen.  One came from Germany with 12 big domed film cameras, all identical with 36 exposure rolls loaded.  He had a couple of assistants, all of whom - plus the divemaster - carried two more cameras each.  This guy would find a big barrel cactus and swim around taking shots of it from every angle until all the cameras were out of film.   Magazine sponsored.

So, I guess it would be possible to have the divemaster carry something, but it would really disrupt the normal dive pattern as he could not then carry his speargun.

I don't think the logistics of transport would be all that bad, other than the added weight. I would have to pack the housing  in checked luggage though - no room in the carryon.

I do have a GoPro, and have thought of using it for years on the macro port.   Never took it underwater, and haven't used it in years.   Never really did anyway.  I'm not much on video.

At 16mm I'm quite happy with the 16-35 as long as it has the internal correction lens on it.   And I wouldn't want to give up the zoom capability either, in favor of a 16mm prime.

Then I really would have to lug two cameras along underwater somehow!

And do they give you enough time to get the shot?

I've been thinking a bit about this, and whether I rush things on dives.  Sometimes, yes, I've felt some time pressure on dives, but not in Roatan.  In Jamaica definitely, when I stayed at a resort that offered free diving, but limited bottom time to 30 minutes for the shallow dive (45 feet?) and only 20 on the deep dive (60+ feet).

I'm not a very slow shooter by nature, but there have been times in Roatan when I took a long time trying for one particular shot.  I'm thinking blennys in surge current.   Took 30 shots once hoping one was nicely focused.   Got about 5.   And if there had been other divers there, I might have had to break off and follow the group.   But that was the D810, and the multiple attempts were due to autofocus limitations.   With the D850 I've found that 29 out of 30 of those shots would be in focus, and I just can work much faster now.

If it's a matter of waiting out some creature to come out of a hole, or stopping to interact with something unusual, we usually have no problem taking 5 minutes to watch it.

On one dive this last trip, we had already been under quite a long time as I had 12 minutes of deco time to bleed off. (Suunto...)  At about the 73 minute mark we came upon an octopus in a hole.  The divemaster had a nicely-trimmed lionfish on the end of his spear that he was taking home for lunch.  (He spears them, pulls out scissors and cuts off all the fins and spines and descales as well while diving along.)   He sacrificed his lionfish to tempt the octopus out, and we spent 5-6 minutes watching him before coming up.   I managed to bleed off the rest of my deco time doing that as the depth was about 12 feet.

It's really nice to be the only diver on the boat.   The way I've been scheduling my visits, it's the norm for me. 75% of my dives there are just me and the divemaster.