gear

Put a Little Tech in Your Life

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

Lately I’ve been toying with the idea of what some entry-level tech diving skills do to help you take better macro photos.

Trim and Buoyancy Skills. Macro photographers spend a lot of time sitting right on the bottom or just above it and movement of several millimeters can ruin your shot. Trim for any diving should be perfectly horizontal.

Breathing Rate and Gas Planning. If you’re doing macro dives, start keeping track of your Surface Air Consumption (SAC, or sometimes called “Surface *Gas* Consumption”) and Respiratory Minute Volume (RMV). Better air consumption means longer dives which means more photos. Knowing your averages and how to use them also means better dive planning. Better gas planning means longer dives but safer because you know where the limits are. You can also do rock bottom calculation… as you descend, keep track of your gas usage getting to the bottom and use that plus a gas reserve as your limit to begin your ascent. Macro divers usually have the square dive profile (down, stay at the same depth, come up) that works well with this method.

Movement. A handful of tech diving propulsion techniques will make your macro diving life so much easier.

  • Frog Kick. Used by tech divers because it doesn’t kick up the silt inside of caves and wrecks: the fins push water upwards and back, not down. On a macro dive, this also means that you don’t cause a lot of backscatter for yourself or others.
  • Modified Flutter. Knees bent, fins high, and little kicks front and back at the knees.
  • Reverse Frog. Can help you back up on a subject if you get too close.
  • Helicopter Turn. Frog kick on one side, reverse frog kick on the other. Helps you to spin around like a helicopter to get a better angle on the subject without moving forward or backward.

Gear. This goes into a bunch of different points.

  • Some of the principles of Hogarthian diving rigs–used in various brand types and levels of strictness–make a lot of sense for macro divers: backplate and wings for perfect trim, simplified and reliable gear, etc.
  • You shouldn’t have any dangling gear to catch on the bottom. Since we’re close to the bottom most of the time, this is a big safety issue for yourself and for the animals on the bottom.
  • Jet-style fins (I have 2 pairs of Apeks RK3 in different sizes for wet and dry diving) make frog kicking and repositioning easier.
  • Thigh pockets for backup torches. Photography is all about light, and backup video torches can make the difference between improvising a lighting studio and aborting a photo dive.
  • Solo Diving Gear. Redundant air supply, spare mask, and a couple of cutting devices. You have to be able to fix problems by yourself because buddies aren’t close enough to get to you in a timely manner.
  • Slung stage cylinder for redundant air supply.

Self-Sufficiency. Being self-sufficient in a diving sense means that you can solve diving problems underwater by yourself. You become a “Self-Rescuing Princess”, as I refer to myself sometimes.

 

 

See you underwater!!!

–Mike

How to Get Good Aquarium Macro Photos

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

Sometimes, aquariums have good subjects for you to take pictures.  A good example is the weedy sea dragon which lives in Southern Australia and then only in a couple of known locations.

But how do you get good aquarium shots, and especially how do you get aquarium macro shots?  Well, there is a process and a couple of considerations on gear.

Call First.  Most aquariums have policies on photography.  Call them for information before you go there.  There are 3 questions you want to ask…

  1. Do you allow photography?  Most allow photography but no flash (it reflects off the glass anyway….)
  2. Do you allow tripods or monopods?  Because you’re doing low-light photos, tripods help you out a lot.
  3. Do you allow lens skirts?  Lens skirts block out the light coming from behind you so that you can shoot photos through glass without any light reflection.  They are absolutely critical for shooting in an aquarium.  They also work for cityscapes from your hotel room if you’re into that sort of thing.

Timing.  Go early in the day during a week.  Avoid peak visiting times because you’ll have to wrestle people to get a good spot on the glass, especially if you’re using a tripod.

Gear.  My rundown on what I take….

  • Camera. Anything works, but that’s the story for most photography.  What I really look for in aquarium shots is good low-light performance.  The biggest problem that you will have is lighting.  Most tanks are dark inside, so you have to open up the aperture, bump up the ISO, and use slower shutter speeds.  Burst mode works very well if you want to take pictures of moving fish.
  • Lenses.  What I would recommend is a wide and a telephoto, both with zooms.  Because you’re standing on the dry side of the glass, you can’t get “macro close” to the subject, so a lens that can focus at a longer distance is preferable.  A telephoto might work well for macro subjects.  The Olympus 60mm macro for Micro Four Thirds can also focus out to infinity which comes in handy.  And lastly, since you’re working with low light, you want as fast (ie, big apertures and low F-Stop) of a lens as you can get and yes I understand that zoom lenses aren’t usually fast.
  • Lens Skirt.  I mentioned this before.  It’s a very valuable tool.
  • Tripod.  This is good for both video and for still photography.  It helps when you do slow shutter photos.  It helps when you set up your lens skirt in a weird location where you don’t want to manually hold the camera for long periods of time.
  • Glass Cleaner.  Either magic clothes like you use for lenses or a photography wet wipe.  These are very important to clean the glass because otherwise you’ll see fuzzy spots in your photos where people leave fingerprints on the glass.

How to Do It.  Now we’re ready to go take some snaps.

  • Find a good subject.  Look for macro subjects closer to the glass.  The more water between you and the subject, the more magnification you need and the more you need to do color-balancing.  Some aquariums have smaller tanks with smaller fish, they are perfect for macro shots.
  • Stick on the Lens Skirt.   They have 4 suction cups to hold on to the glass.  Try to put the lens skirt perpendicular to the subject so the camera lens shoots straight through the glass.
  • Clean the Glass.  Very important.  Clean the glass where your lens will go.  This is usually a “window” inside the lens skirt.
  • Set up the Tripod.  Mount the camera and lens on the tripod so that the camera is inside the lens skirt and the lens shoots directly through the glass.
  • Take some Photos.  Feel awesome about your skills.  You’ll have to mess with settings a bit to get the right exposure, and you’ll probably have to change exposure for each tank.
  • Sharing is Caring.  If the aquarium has a lot of people, let them use your lens skirt from time to time so that they have good photos too.  And most importantly: they won’t complain about your lens skirt, tripod, and desire to hog all the good subjects.