Advice on first UW photography rig

for a low dive count person with likely ambitions of 10 dives per year, KISS.  A simpler camera with a single strobe, or even a video or ring light instead.    That keeps the rig impact down, and less things to get wrong trying to get shots.

I just came back from 10 days on the Philippines Aggressor where the onboard UW photo person shot with the TG6.   It was the best show of its capabilities I've seen, where he made great use of the microscope mode for small objects, and a wet lens dome port for WA such as whale sharks.  The wet port option let him attach or detach at will, so he didn't have to make the predive choice as most of us ILC types do.

The BS packages for the TG-6 seem reasonable, though I would likely forego the snoot option as another device of frustration for those who aren't going to dive enough.   Great effects...when you can achieve them.   But more ways to F it up when your muscle memory is low, and more bulk.    Also a threat to the reef for a low count diver.    If you were going to a muck diving place where the entire focus is macro on the rubble, perhaps worthwhile anyway.  But for casual macro?   Save for another day.

that image is not properly balanced for ambient- clearly has too much red (purple).

Also not particularly germane to the OP's topic.

Architeuthis wrote:

Hi Yan,

First of all, welcome to UW-photography...

Then I have to warn you that starting UW-photography at the beginner level is, unfortunately, not advisable: #1.: When taking photos very good buoancy skills are required in order not to damage the environment and, even more important, #2.: UW-photography is an absorbing activity and even very experienced divers can forget that they are in a hostile envorinment and can neglect safety routines. Please think again carefully whether you really want to start now...

Regarding your equipment, I believe a TG like camera is a good choice. In case I were you, I would look for a second hand rig, maybe even TG-5 or 4, (e.g. in Scubaboard or Wetpixel) in order to safe money. This will serve you very well for the first few years and then you will know exactly by yourself what you will want...

Regards, Wolfgang

Hi Wolfgang,

Thanks for your answer. I understand the concern you are bringing up. I'm already very self conscious while diving and take maximal care not to do anything stupid. Of course photography adds a significant distraction, which is important to be aware of.

I may take 2 week-long diving trips this year, that will be another 25 dives or so, I will see if I start right away or if I feel better starting after this.

kelpdiver wrote:

for a low dive count person with likely ambitions of 10 dives per year, KISS. A simpler camera with a single strobe, or even a video or ring light instead. That keeps the rig impact down, and less things to get wrong trying to get shots.

I just came back from 10 days on the Philippines Aggressor where the onboard UW photo person shot with the TG6. It was the best show of its capabilities I've seen, where he made great use of the microscope mode for small objects, and a wet lens dome port for WA such as whale sharks. The wet port option let him attach or detach at will, so he didn't have to make the predive choice as most of us ILC types do.

The BS packages for the TG-6 seem reasonable, though I would likely forego the snoot option as another device of frustration for those who aren't going to dive enough. Great effects...when you can achieve them. But more ways to F it up when your muscle memory is low, and more bulk. Also a threat to the reef for a low count diver. If you were going to a muck diving place where the entire focus is macro on the rubble, perhaps worthwhile anyway. But for casual macro? Save for another day.

Thanks for your answer. Helps to put things in perspective. Snoot is probably not necessary at first indeed.

PHXAZCRAIG wrote:

Some general thoughts, but the TL;DR version is the rig you are looking at seems quite reasonable, though some of your expectations may not be.

Let me just sort of randomly discuss 'classes of UW rigs' a bit, based on my own history.

I started with a disposable underwater film camera. The next trip I had my own digital camera, a Canon point-n-shoot (SD630) in a dedicated Canon housing. (Total cost about $450 new.) I went through a number of Canon point-n-shoots, along with my wife, for several years. SD630, SD870is (first camera i had with IS/VR, which was useful), s95, s120. All were decent, and the newer ones were always a bit better than then older ones.

I eventually hit a wall where I'd taken the shots those cameras were capable of and couldn't really find a way to improve there. Then I added a strobe, which made a huge difference. Then I tried to upgrade with a RX100 ii, Nauticam housing, dual YS-D1 strobes, a focus light, a wet macro lens and a wet wide angle dome. Cost for all that was $5000.

The strobes made a huge difference. Really more important than the camera, within the point-n-shoot class. It's good that you are starting out with a strobe, though that's going to add to the learning curve, and not just photographically. My own (late) wife suffered a ripped eardrum on the 3rd dive of a liveaboard trip in Fiji because she sank down while photographing a Lionfish and not noticing the depth change.

You see once you add a strobe, the rig is no longer something you can simply let go of to dangle from a wrist strap while you use your hands to deal with something underwater. It's much more likely that you will have a rig with two handles that needs to be held about 100% of the time you are in the water with it. That will very much affect a beginning diver. You might try spending some dives without the strobe at first.

As nice as the RX100 was with dual strobes, it was still a point-n-shoot, and it still suffered from AF lag. I got lots of shots of fish tales exiting the frame. It was frustrating, and the following year I spend thousands more to house my D810. I at least could reuse the focus light and strobes.

A DSLR solved my problems. AF was fast and where I wanted it. Dynamic range was awesome. Pixels were everywhere! I could crop (quite a bit). My images were much higher quality.

A DLSR caused a bunch of new problems. First off, the old cameras (like your TG6 idea) had zoom lenses covering a more-or-less normal range. The DSLR (especially full-frame Nikons) pretty much had a 105 macro choice, a 16-35 zoom choice, and a couple of fisheye choices. So much different focal ranges than I was shooting before. Everything became more specialized. Macro ONLY. Wide angle ONLY. Pick before you dive, even before the boat leaves the dock.

And of course the full frame DSLR brought MASSIVE logistic issues, issues you will avoid with a TG6 rig. Hauling around a 230mm dome port has defined how I travel since the day I bought it. This next trip it's going into a Pelican case so I at least no longer have to carry it on. My wide angle dive rig weighs 26 pounds in the dry, by the way. That's just camera, not the carryon or suitcase.

I used the YS-D1 strobes exclusively from 2015 to last summer when I used a loaner Backscatter MF and snoot at the Digital Shootout. I liked it so much I bought a used one, and recently I bought the MF2 with the little plastic gizmo to do remotely-triggered shooting. Let me comment on your strobe options here.

First, the MF2 with snoot for macro. The TG5 and TG6 are well-known as excellent for macro. Partly because the optics are good at it, but also partly because the camera is small enough to get into a lot of tight shooting situations you can't do with a big DSLR rig. You can even use that camera on a selfie stick like a Gopro to get more angles. When shooting macro, the MF/MF2 seems a perfect choice for the TG's. I saw a fair amount of them set up that way at the Digital Shootout. The MF is a somewhat lower-power strobe, but you simply don't need that much power when shooting macros at strobe distances measured in inches. The snoot - skip that for now - is very specialized, and while it works brilliantly, it takes REAL SKILL in buoyancy to aim and use it. It can be extremely frustrating to aim. You have no idea - take my word for it!! Add one after you have another 50 dives in with the camera.

Wide angle is another story. You can't seem to ever have enough strobe power for wide angle, but even if you did, it wouldn't cover more than a few feet of water. Thus you very often end up with mixed strobe and ambient lighting. That's ok if isolating a fish in the water, but not when you have a detail in a coral that runs out of the strobe range. It will either look too red under the strobes, or too green everywhere else. It can be a huge issue, and I find myself mostly just going with ambient when doing wide angle.

Which has this run-on effect. I only want to do wide angle with very clear water, shallow-ish depths and bright sun without clouds. Think 20 foot deep reef shots.

If you shoot like me, you may simply end up not using a strobe when not shooting macro. In which case the MF/MF2 strobe will be fine.

I hedged my bets a bit on my last dive trip. When shooting macro, I would put my MF on one arm and a YS-D1 on the other. The YS-D1 was 'just in case' I needed to shoot something a bit farther away than macro, and/or I wanted some 'fill flash'. I rarely used it.

I 2018 I had been shooting the D810 for three years, and I carried the RX100 as a backup camera. I only used one more time, at a resort in Jamaica. One of my friends asked me to shoot their wedding 're-ceremony' on the beach, and that ceremony took place during the break between dives. I got off the dive boat, had my girlfriend hand my D810, and I proceeded to shoot the ceremony with it. Then I went back to the boat for the 2nd dive. I didn't have time to unhouse/rehouse my D810, so I dove twice with the RX100.

That was interesting for me, because I go to see the best and worst of the RX100 rig right away. The best part was having the normal zoom range again, so I could more easily shoot some subjects. (Turtle was one.) I of course still had the focus lag and point-n-shoot issues (like short battery life). The worst part was the IQ. I had grown used to the flexibility you have when shooting ISO 64 on a 36MP camera. Aside from not being able to crop, nor push and pull shadows and highlights, there was a clear drop-off in lens quality. I hadn't noticed before, but after shooting the DSLR for years it was pretty visibly worse.

So there's your tradeoffs. Some added flexibility over a DSLR/ML, but less IQ at the same time. A normal (slightly wide to a portrait length) zoom, but inability to do real wide angle. Super macro capabilities, but aside from ease in positioning camera, not as good as DSLR macro.

Which is the dilemma in a nutshell: The better the IQ, the less flexibility. The better the IQ, the harder it is to pack and carry. (Size/weight).

The rig you look at will be very good at doing macro, though that also requires excellent buoyancy skills. The flash is perfectly suited to it. I'd suggest leaning into it. Get the rig and shoot macro, then more macro, then some more macro. Do some strobe-less wide angle, and eventually you might either add bigger strobes, or a ML camera that does better wide angle, or maybe just a wet dome port.

Thanks for such a detailed answer ! It really helps massively, especially regarding the strobes. I like very much the idea of taking it simple at first, starting with shooting macro with a cheaper strobe and wide-angle with ambient light (and a wet lens, which I discovered after writing the original post).

Spending some dives without a strobe at first sounds like an excellent advice too.

Chrissi_82 wrote:

the other posters all made very valid points. Maybe just my perspective:

80 dives, startet with a GoPro-China knock-off, switched to the GoPro 7 (there was a red filter available) and for a recent tour to Indonesia, I bought basically your gear (TG6 with the Oly housing plus grip and flash). I usually don't do diving trips, it's more diving along the way if there is an opportunity (thus also 10 dives per annum). You could save further by buying a non-Oly housing.

If I were you, I would also probably start with the China knock-off. You can get those at Amazon for <100 USD with all the equipment you need. The quality is quite decent nowadays. Obviously, they are better are taking videos than macro pictures, but to learn the ropes of moving underwater with a camera, they are a great start. Lots of people underwater have no idea what they are doing with their cameras, so they hit the corals while positioning or annoy the heck out of fellow divers when they block the view for the rest of the group.

If after a while you really want to spend more, the TG6 is a good starting point and a kid in your family will love the action cam. If you buy PHXAZCRAIG's rig, you'll probably see better results, but for pictures of memory value, it's absolutely ok. I bought an external strobe, but should have bought a permament light (not sure how the English expressions are). If the whole scene is illuminated, my feeling is that the TG6 finds it easier to focus.

I wouldn't worry to much about the performance for whale sharks etc. The limiting factor is usually not the camera, but the planktion impacting the visibility.

Thanks for your answer.

I'm already bringing a GoPro with me but felt a bit limited during my last dives, particularly to shoot stills.

A camera is indeed a distraction underwater, I feel already very self conscious when diving as I surely don't wanna do anything stupid that would be annoying to other people or damage the surroundings. However I do it, I'll go slowly but surely to take time to learn how to do things properly.

YanC wrote:

I'm already bringing a GoPro with me but felt a bit limited during my last dives, particularly to shoot stills.

A camera is indeed a distraction underwater, I feel already very self conscious when diving as I surely don't wanna do anything stupid that would be annoying to other people or damage the surroundings. However I do it, I'll go slowly but surely to take time to learn how to do things properly.

Nikonos II with Ikelite flash attachment circa 1969

After being inspired by a trip to the Florida Keys shortly after being certified in 1969 by the YMCA in a flooded Chicagoland quarry, I started my adventure in photography with a Nikonos II as my first camera. In the 80s and 90s found myself working in the Philippines where I was able to become a divemaster, build a dive boat and up my U/W game with a Nikonos V and SB102 TTL flash in a configuration very similar to the one you are considering. I also purchased the close-up lens kit which had metal frame on a stick in front of the lens which made framing and exposure of closeups very easy, especially with Ektachrome which was difficult to expose correctly—no margin for overexposure.

Probably the biggest challenge was finding a dive buddy patient enough to just hang out in one spot waiting for the reef fish not to be spooked. That was one of the reasons my shooting evolved to taking most of my photos with the close-up kit; it was much faster and allowed me to keep up with the other non-photographers I dove with.

The second biggest challenges were water clarity and lighting. With the Nikonos II rig in the photo I was able to move the light to a variety of angles and distances exposing per the guide number of the flash cubes. The Nikonos V with the flash mounted on the bracket similar to the rig you are considering provides fewer options. The ideal situation is to have a dive buddy who understands lighting carrying a second flash using the one on camera as the frontal source and the off camera one behind as rim lighting.

The third is the fact that with U/W gear it is not a matter of if it will flood and get ruined but when. Salt water and high voltage electricity don’t mix well and my SB102 flash flooding and moving back to the States were I didn’t have the opportunity to dive were the reasons I stopped.

I am aware you said you aren’t interested in video, but I had to do it again today I would shoot videos instead of stills because they are easier to shoot while diving and less demanding technically; viewer expectations for IQ and color balance are not as critical as with stills. I shot with color negative film because it had more exposure latitude and the best response I got from viewers of my photos was when I set up a copy stand and photographed all my prints with my 8mm video camera with a musical sound track and showed them as a video.

Chuck Gardner wrote:

The third is the fact that with U/W gear it is not a matter of if it will flood and get ruined but when. Salt water and high voltage electricity don’t mix well and my SB102 flash flooding and moving back to the States were I didn’t have the opportunity to dive were the reasons I stopped.

Vacuum ports and the shift to fiberoptics have dramatically reduced the risk of flooding.   The Nik has so many points of vulnerability and there was a lot of work to do before each dive.   With my Nauticam housed cameras (now an R5, before a GH4), I lube the o-rings of each port and battery door at the start of the trip and that's it.  I just ensure I seal it up > 15 minutes before the dive and ensure it stays green.

Prior to that, I went 7 years with an Aquatica and had two close calls.   i didn't attached the sync cord solidly and salt water got into the Nikonos type connection port, but not the housing itself.   Now I use a flash trigger plus fiber that can be attached/detached at any point.

And the batteries on a YS-110 emitted some gas and pushed the o-ring out.    That one looked messy, but I was able to clean out out battery compartment and continue to use it for many years before replacing.

Not to discourage you, but you should realize that it takes a lot of trial and error to shoot underwater. You will not get great pics without significant time in the water. The Tg6 and other point and shoot cameras are A good place to start. Try to get some pool time to learn whatever camera you get. A good mirrorless or DSLR system with strobes, ports etc will run you $8-10k. If you are only doing 10 ish dives a year, you won’t develop skills to justify that level of expense.