underwatermacro

Learning to be Shallow

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Shallow macro dives are awesome!!!  Some of the best times that I’ve had have been in the shallows with a camera.  And by shallow, I’m talking 5-8 meters.  Why?  Let me go through the reasons:

Long Long Long Dives.  Since divers don’t consume air quickly in the shallows (you should know this from your basic open water class), we have more time to shoot.  Like 80+ minutes from a single 11.2 Liter aluminum, even more if you’re a tiny person.  That’s a lot of photos!!

No Decompression Limit.  This is the biggest benefit.  Since macro divers have longer dives than most divers, nitrogen saturation and NDL are a bigger issue.  But when you’re less than 10 meters deep, it’s impossible to breathe enough nitrogen to run into mandatory decompression.  In fact, the entire dive is at a normal decompression depth.  This means less surface interval time.

Better Ambient Light.  This means you can hunt subjects without a torch.  This means that in some cases you don’t even need artificial light for your subject.  The picture below of the blenny was taken at 4 meters deep with a low-power fill strobe to add color.  However, you can see the background is also not as blue as in deeper dives.

Shorter Swim Times and Smaller Gas Reserves.  On shallow dives, it takes less time to swim down to the bottom and then up at the end of the dive.  This means more time on the bottom looking for subjects.  But more importantly, when you dive deep you need more of an air reserve.  Say, from 25 meters deep you might “turn the dive” and start swimming up to the shallows at 80-85 bar so that you get to the safety stop at around 50 bar.  Any less doesn’t give you enough gas to deal with emergencies at depth.  On a 5 meter dive, “turning the dive” means that you surface.  You only need 5 bar (if that) to surface from 5 meters, so you head up at 30 bar: the gas reserve can be a lot smaller.  Just be kind to yourself and don’t run completely out of gas: it adds quite a bit of risk if you can’t make it immediately to the surface and it is bad for the cylinder because it could let water inside.

Surface Swims.  On a shallow dive, you can save air by doing a surface swim without using your regulator set (protip: a snorkel comes in handy).  Because you can see the bottom, you can still navigate.

Extend Your Deep Dives.  You can get in a shallow macro dive as part of a deeper dive by simply extending your safety stop if you’re near the bottom.  Instead of sitting around motionless for 3 minutes at 5 meters like most people do, try looking around for subjects and snapping photos for 15 minutes or until you get low on air.  This comes with a warning: sometimes non-macro-diving divemasters freak out when I surface with only 20 bar of gas. (Hi guys!!)  =)

3rd and 4th and Night Dives.  Usually when you do 2 deeper dives earlier in the day, it’s safe to do one or two shallow macro dives.  Even if you started the day out doing wide-angle, you can take a break, get lunch, reconfigure your camera for macro, and go do a relaxed shallow dive.  No stress + no NDL + macro photography = fun!

 

 

See you underwater!!!

–Mike

Video: Spider Crab

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I think I’ve had this in a sushi roll before…..

A crazy spider crab from Raja Ampat. This crab is so camouflaged that it has hydroids growing on it. These are hard to take video of because you don’t know for sure where the face and eyes are except for “in the middle somewhere”.

The current is pretty bad, too, I kept getting knocked around.

 

Share Your Subjects

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Sometimes when you dive with a group, you find a rare and unusual subject.  I’m here to remind you that “sharing is caring” and to give you the how-to for sharing based on a lot of group macro dives.

How to share your subject:

  • If there is a queue of divers waiting to shoot your subject, get 10 or so shots and then go to the back of the queue or find another nearby subject.
  • Mark the subject so that others can find it.  Use a torch or a lembeh stick if you’re on the plain, sandy bottom.
  • Get the other diver’s attention by pointing your torch at them and waiving side to side.
  • Motion for the diver to come over.
  • Point out the subject and its relationship to how you market it.
  • Show them the subject on your camera LCD so they know exactly what to look for.
  • Show them the subject again.
  • Show them which angle is the best for the subject.
  • Wait for them to find the subject and give you an “OK” sign.
  • Back up with either reverse frogkick (If you don’t know how to do this, learn on your next couple of dives) or by pushing off a non-sensitive bottom.
  • Slowly fin away from the other diver with modified tech flutterkick (knees bent, feet up higher, small kicks) or frog kick.  Avoid kicking dirt over everybody.

 

Howto: High-Key Underwater Macro Photos

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I previously discusses low-key photography, now moving on to high-key photography.  High-key photography is a subject on a white or light background.

Why High-Key

High-key is a great way to bring out other colors in the photo.  The trick is to overexpose the photo except for the subject, which you leave as normal or just a little bit overexposed.

Getting Started

The process is relatively simple.

You need a lighter background to bounce light off of.  The important thing is that empty water does bounce light back but only with a slow shutter speed and only if you want a blue or brown background.  There are a couple of ways to get the right background:

  • Pick a subject with a vertical backstop.  Coral, anemones, etc.  Even colors like orange or red work.
  • Shoot looking down on the subject so that the sand or coral serves as the background.
  • Use a dive slate as a mobile background.

The next thing that you do is to light the background and try to avoid getting excessive light on the subject.  This could mean many things:

  • 2 Strobes or Video Lights with Diffusers: point them forward or outward.  Try to “kiss” the subject with the inside edge of the light beam.
  • 2 Video Lights: cross them behind the subject.  Without diffusers, it’s easier to see where the edge of the beam is, so you end up adjusting your lighting more.
  • Single Focus or Video Light: Use a longer arm to reach over the top of the subject and light behind it.

The most nuanced part of the setup is to make sure that your subject isn’t in silhouette.  If you have to, add weaker light from the front or top to add a small amount of light to the subject so that some of the details are restored.

The last thing to do is to adjust your exposure.  This depends on your gear, but it’s usually one or two of the following:

  • Manual Mode: Use a wider aperture like F4 or F6 and a slower shutter speed.  The hard part here is to avoid a super-thin depth of focus (with a supermacro converter, I usually have a paper-thin focus plane) or to slow the shutter speed down so much that you introduce blurring from moving: yourself or the subject.
  • Automatic Mode: Adjust the Exposure Compensation to +1 or +2 to trick the camera into exposing a lighter photo.  The amount that you have to adjust depends on how much light the background and subject reflect.
  • Turn Up the Lighting: With some setups like strobes and video lights, you can increase the power on your lighting to overexpose the background.  The important thing is to overexpose the background and not the subject.

Since there are many variables involved, there are many options that all work.  Try using multiple techniques to get the job done and feel free to experiment.

Take it to the Next Level

While you’re making the background lighter use a board with glitter for an interesting background.  Combined with overexposure and a bit of bokeh, it makes for a really nice picture.

Try different colored backgrounds like orange sponges or a field of light-blue tunicates as a background.

Try compositions with the subject offset to the left or right and some negative space opposite them.  Try to use the 1/3 layout with the subject on one of the thirds and the other side blank.

 

Dry Land Training: Focus Distance

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Finding your minimum and maximum focus distance is a critical skill in underwater macro.  This is because if you can’t focus, you can’t take pictures that you’ll like.  In supermacro, most of the the time you can’t even see your subject because the depth of focus is so thin.

I test for maximum and minimum focus distance every time I have a new camera, lens, or wet diopter.  I’ll even test combinations of these 3 to see what I like.

Given:

  • A well-lit room
  • One camera with lens
  • One housing with appropriate port
  • Series of wet diopters
  • A subject (can be a nudie replica or something as mundane as the screw on a tripod head)

Process:

  1. Mount camera and lens in housing with port.
  2. Find minimum focus distance first.
  3. Put the glass of the port up against the subject.
  4. Try to gain focus with the auto-focus–back-button or half-press on the shutter.
  5. When you have the closest focus point, measure the distance from the end of the port to the subject.
  6. Check for farthest focus point.
  7. Move the camera back from the subject while you are trying to gain focus.
  8. When you can’t focus anymore, go forward just a bit and get a focus.
  9. When you know the furthest focus point, measure the distance from the end of the port to the subject.

Tricks:

  • Put the camera in constant focus mode:
    • Panasonic: AFC
    • Canon: AI Servo
    • Nikon: AF-C (Continuous-servo AF)
  • Us manual focus to set the minimum and maximum focus distance.
  • Put the subject on a ruler so that you can easily measure the distances.
  • Try stacking wet diopters.  I sometimes use a Nauticam SMC-1 with a Saga +5.  Different diopter combinations have different focus ranges.
  • Once you have a focus lock, move the camera in and out to see how deep the focus is.  Try it with maximum and minimum aperture.

 

Breakfast macro photography. #PancakesAndWhaleSharks #UnderwaterMacroPseudoWideAngle

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See you all underwater!!!

–Mike

Review: Underwater Macro on the Lumix G9

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In March, I bought a new Panasonic Lumix G9 to replace my EM10 MkII.

So far, I like it, both on land and in the water.  It’s worked out pretty well for me.  I’m at the end of a month-long trip consisting of the following:

  • 8 days in Raja Ampat and Misool
  • 10 days in Bali: Padang Bai, Tulamben, and Ubud
  • 5 days in Santorini (no diving, lots of donkeys and white buildings)
  • 5 days at home in Massachusetts (no photography)
  • 5 days in Athens (no diving, lots of buildings made of rock)

I think I’ve carried the G9 every single day on this trip except for when I went home.

Some notes in no particular order….

Housing.  Since the camera was just released in February, it’s still early for the housing to be in the usual dive photography shops.  I went to the Nauticam booth at the Asia Dive Expo in Singapore and bought their demo model.  Nauticam is starting to make their mirrorless housings more like their DSLR housings.  This is a shift in price and features: $1400 for an EM10II housing v/s $2600 for the G9 model.  There is a fully-removable back on the G9 v/s the hinged back on my EM10II. And the G9 housing has 2xM14 and 1xM16 bulkheads (one M14 has the vacuum system valve) v/s the single M14 bulkhead (where I put a vacuum valve after purchase) that was on the EM10II.

Accessories and Lenses.  I went from one Micro Four Thirds camera to another Micro Four Thirds.  That means that my lenses, housing ports, strobes, arms, etc still stayed the same.

I’m still using the Olympus 60mm Macro, Nauticam port, and Supermacro Converter (SMC-1) for macro and supermacro.

I’m still using my Olympus 7-14 Pro with 180mm glass dome for wide angle.

Flash Trigger.  I did lose an onboard flash (the EM10 has a built-in flash that I used to signal the strobes), so I needed to get a flash trigger.  I got one bundled with the housing.  Sadly, it doesn’t do optical TTL, so I’m running my strobes in manual mode.

Image Stabilization.  The G9 has some serious image stabilization.  What that means to photographers is that you can run a slower shutter speed without blurring the photo because of your own motion.  This is cool on land, but only 25% as awesome in the water because our subjects are moving.  That is, if you’re taking pictures of a nudibranch in a current, image stabilization helps where you’re moving but not where the subject is moving.  Still, it’s a good thing to have.

Back Button Focus.  This was fairly easy to set up: assign the F1 button as the AF Lock button and turn off half-press AF on the shutter button.

Joystick.  The housing doesn’t have controls for the joystick.  It’s OK, I don’t miss it underwater.

EVF and LCD.  For macro, I use a Nauticam 45-degree viewfinder.  The Electronic View Finder (EVF) of the G9 is awesome and works great with the Nauticam viewfinder.  Although folks with glasses might want to try setting the EVF resolution (v.mode button on the right side of the EVF) to a smaller size if they need to.  The housing doesn’t have a button to set the EVF.

I use the LCD for underwater wide-angle photography.  The LCD seems to be a little bit darker than the actual picture.  After awhile you’ll get used to it.

For switching between EVF and LCD, the F3 button to the left and below the EVF works great.  There are 3 modes: LCD, EVF, and switch back and forth using the sensor built into the EVF.  In the last mode, the housing will always set off the sensor, so it’s functionally the same as EVF.

Filming Video.  4K60P video is awesome, and the housing has a button for it.  Just film away.  However, I have yet to figure out how to do playback of videos on the camera underwater because the “play” button is on the LCD as a touch control.

Red-Light Focus.  The camera has some problems with focusing while I was using a red focus torch and point-focus.  The phase-detection software in the autofocus engine gets confused by so much of a single color.  So I switched to back-button focus, moved the camera off of the subject, locked focus on the bottom using white light, and switched back to red light for the real subject.

High-Resolution Mode and Focus Stacking.  It’s like HDR but for high resolution images of 80MP (by the way, high-resolution files are huge) or for extended depth of field.  On land, you need a non-moving subject and a tripod.  It doesn’t work in underwater photography unless the camera and the subject don’t move.  However, on land it’s awesome for the sunrises and sunsets and landscapes that crowd around dive sites.

Burst Shooting.  I forgot to try this underwater but I’ve used it quite a bit with my wife and niece while they were swinging on giant swings or jumping on beaches… the usual fast-action tourist shots.  It would work underwater provided that you turn off your strobes and take the photos with either natural light or focus/video lights.

Burst shots do make a lot of files very quickly.  Each file is 18-20MB in size for RAW files.  I go through and delete the rejected shots in Lightroom Library Module to save hard drive space.

Reading Raw Files.  MacOS and Windows can’t read them natively yet, so you have to manage photos in LightRoom.  This will eventually change with updates from the operating system vendors.  I did keep on “Save as RAW and as low-quality JPG” for awhile so that I could manage files with the OS, especially where I forget to format the SD card.  However, it slows down the SD card writes so I eventually moved it to write just RAW files and my camera operator (ie, myself) was trained enough to remember to dump files off card and format card at the end of each day.

S-Curves.  For macro, I use +5 to highlights and -5 to shadows to add a lot of contrast to the photo.  Because strobes sometimes kill the contrast: they work too well.  Back on land, it’s a bit too extreme and the family complained about how this looks in their tourist shots.  So I have to go back to a normal curve for land photography.

Settings for Underwater Macro.  I have a couple of things that I set for macro:

  • Photography Menu
    • Quality: RAW.
    • Photo Style: Vivid.
    • Metering Mode: Spot.
    • Highlight-Shadow: +5 Highlights, -5 Shadows.  Because strobes kill contrast sometimes.
  • WrenchC
    • Focus/Release Shutter
      • Shutter AF: Off.  Turns off focus at half-press.
      • AF Assist Lamp: Off.  Doesn’t work inside a housing.
    • Operation
      • Fn Button set
        • REC Mode
          • Fn1: AFL AEL.
  • Mode Dial: Manual

Settings for Underwater Wide-Angle.  Yes, I do wide-angle sometimes.  I set the following:

  • Photography Menu
    • Quality: RAW.
    • Photo Style: Natural.  Because vivid amplifies the blue-green look underwater.
    • Metering Mode: Spot.
    • Highlight-Shadow: +3 Highlights, -3 Shadows.  Because water kills color and contrast.
  • WrenchC
    • Focus/Release Shutter
      • Shutter AF: On.  Turns on focus at half-press.
      • AF Assist Lamp: Off.  Doesn’t work inside a housing.
  • Mode Dial: Shutter Priority

Settings for Dry Photos:  Even more amazing, I even take photos on land.  Here is what I set:

  • Photography Menu
    • Quality: RAW.
    • Photo Style: Vivid.  Because I like it.
    • Metering Mode: Area plus spot.
    • Highlight-Shadow: +0 Highlights, +2 Shadows.  Because outside photos with the subject in the shadows.
  • WrenchC
    • Focus/Release Shutter
      • Shutter AF: On.  Turns on focus at half-press.
  • Mode Dial: Shutter Priority

See you underwater!!!

–Mike

Adding UV Light

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A couple of months ago I got a new focus torch.  It’s a Scubalamp F24.  I had been using a Fixeye Fix Neo which is good in its own right but I swapped it out for one reason: the F24 has a blue and a UV pink/purple light.  The UV makes white and yellow glow, just like a black light on a white t-shirt.  This adds a little something into the photo that I like, even when I flash over the top of the subject with my strobe.  If I notice that the subject has some white in it and isn’t scared off by bright light, I turn on the UV.

You’ll agree with the results….

See you underwater!!!

–Mike