Manual Exposure Settings Underwater Macro With Lumix G9

Posted on by in underwatermacro and tagged , , , , , .

One of the things to keep track of is a set of starting exposure settings that you can set your camera up with before you get into the water.  Add it to your pre-dive and camera setup checklists.

Macro

My starting setup for macro with the Olympus 60mm macro lens:

  • Speed: 1/125
  • Aperture: F8
  • ISO: 100
  • Strobes: +0.3

Supermacro

My starting setup for supermacro with the Nauticam SMC-1 and the Olympus 60mm macro lens:

  • Speed: 1/125
  • Aperture: F22
  • ISO: 400
  • Strobes: +0.3

Notes

Shutter speed of 1/125 is a tradeoff.  At 1/80 and slower, you get streaking from backscatter and camera movement.  However, at speeds above 1/250, the flash won’t sync.

Stacking wet lenses/diopters gives you a thinner plane of focus.  So with the diopter, I use as small as aperture as possible to give me as much focus depth as I can get.

I’m somewhat surprised how much brighter my photos are without diopters.

On deeper, darker dives, you might have less ambient light so you need to use a focus torch.