Building a system for underwater photography

By Underwater Photography

Posted by Vandit Kalia |

[Partially updated April 12, 2020 – however, I recommend people also read my guide to Putting Together an Underwater Photography System Around a Compact Camera for more up-to-date information]

So you want to put together a high-quality system for underwater photography, but are deterred by the prices. You are not alone.   Equipment cost used to be one of the biggest deterrents in underwater photography. While the cost of a complete, versatile system capable of handling most underwater subjects is still extremely high, the high quality offered by compact camersa means that it is possible to build up a long-term system in small, more affordable steps. Spreading out this cost brings a high-quality system within the reach of most people.

The purpose of this article is to provide a roadmap for putting together an underwater system in a step-by-step manner. Given the mind-boggling array of products, lack of any standards and various compatibility issues, this step can be a minefield for most people. I personally spent several months reading various forums in order to truly grasp my choices and make an educated choice. Hopefully, this article will accelerate your learning curve somewhat, by telling you what to look for.

While this method lacks the instant gratification of buying everything at once, there is one important benefit – by adding one component at a time, the photographer has a chance to master each component. This is conceptually an easier way to master underwater photography, rather than trying to deal with many variables all at once.

Step 1 – Select the correct compact camera & housing

Polycarbonate housings are available for most housings made by Canon & Olympus. Fuji, Sony, Nikon, Panasonic and others also have housings available for quite a few of their cameras – these are either manufacturer housings selling at around $200 (give or take) or third-party housings made by companies like Ikelite and Fantasea. So you certainly have no dearth of choices. Therefore, first thing to do is to narrow down your list of choices.

The biggest mistake people make at this point is they buy a housing for the camera that they have, or they select a camera and then buy a housing for it. For someone with the stated goal of putting together a system, this is the wrong way to go about things. The camera and housing must be considered together when deciding what to buy.

Start by forgetting camera brands. Focus, instead, on 4 criteria when it comes to the camera: responsiveness (ie, combination of focus lag and shutter lag) ,of RAW, ability to shoot good close-ups and a reasonably good wide angle.    Don’t get caught up in image quality pixel peeping or dynamic range – for underwater work, it does not matter too much.

Now, look at the housing. Here, ignore brand or resistance to flooding. All housings work on the same principle (use of an O-ring to make a seal) and so require the same level of care & are more or less equally prone to flooding. Instead, what you care about is whether or not the housing can accept add-on (or wet) wideangle or macro lenses.  This is because most compact cameras are neither wide enough nor offer high-enough magnifications by themselves – the use of add-on lenses greatly increases the ability of the cameras in these 2 areas.  You won’t be buying these lenses yet, but it you will need this later.

Once you apply all these factors, you are going to have a much smaller list. You can then sort from this list based on ergonomics, other usage (top-sides shooting), price, color, or whatever.
Congrats. Now get this gear wet. Check out my 10 tips to improve your underwater photography, and learn to use your camera.

Step 2 – Add a strobe

Ok, if you have read my article with the 10 tips, you will notice that I listed some cheap strobes. The bad news is that as far as you are concerned, cheap strobes are out. You may buy one as a stop-gap measure but that is a detour along this fine path that we are taking. As far as system-building goes, you are going to buy a good quality strobe.

If you see your end-game being a housed DSLR or Mirrorless system (read DSLR or Compacts before jumping to an answer – also try renting a housed DSLR or playing with one in the water first before reaching a conclusion), then you will need to buy strobes which have a wide angle of view, to utilize the super wide angle lenses you can use with these cameras.      Also, if you plan to use a DSLR, you may require a strobe which is triggered via an electrical sync cable, as opposed to an optical sync cable.    So keep future planning in mind.

But other than this, what you want is the strobe with the most power, a nice broad angle of coverage and light that is uniform across the entire area of coverage, without any hotspots in the middle or significant drop off on the sides.

Realistically, there are 3 brands you will be looking at now – Inon, Sea&Sea&Ikelite.
Ikelite is one of the most popular underwater brands. The two main things going for them are: (1) they offer true TTL when used with an Ike DSLR housing and (2) Ikes have great customer service. In all other areas, they cost more than comparably-specced strobes from Inon&Sea&Sea, atleast here in Asia ( US prices for Inon&Sea+Sea are quite higher and Ike prices tend to be lower).  TTL may appear to be a good draw, but IMO, it should not be a deciding factor.   Manual strobes are actually surprisingly easy to use and IMO,  provide more consistent exposure.   TTL or lack thereof should be a tie-breaker, not a primary selection criteria.

The other two contenders are Inon&Sea&Sea.  At the time of writing, the main models are D2000/D2000S and Z240 (Inon), and YS-110 & YS-250 (Sea&Sea).  The last S+S strobes costs a fair bit more but is the most powerful of the lot. The D2000/D2000S are slave-fired only, which rules them out if you are looking at a DSLR rig with electrical flash syncing as your end goal. Other than that, all these models offer a full array of settings and controls (manual, slave, optical TTL, pre-flash compatibility, etc).

At this point, you also want to get an optical cable, which allows your camera’s built-in flash to trigger the external strobe and allows optical TTL.

Lastly, invest in a decent pair of arms for your strobe. Ultra-Light Control Systems (ULCS) and Technical Lighting Control (TLC) make good arms using standard 1″ balls at each end. They are pricey, but will last you a while. Save money – buy used.    You can also get less expensive arms off Ali Express or Ebay, and they work just as well.

Now that you have a strobe, experiment with using the strobe, angles and power. Shoot in both TTL and manual mode, and you’ll soon realize that manual isn’t too tough either.

Step 3 – Add wet lenses

There are quite a few manufacturers that makes wet lenses and adapters to fit a wide variety of compact camera housings.  Depending on what you like to shoot, you may want to add a macro lens and a wideangle adapter. These will improve the usability of your system and allow you to shoot more expansive wide-angles and also achieve greater magnification.

These wet lenses aren’t cheap – but they improve the usability of your compact camera to perhaps 90% of that of a housed ILC.   when you upgrade to a DSLR, you can recover most of your costs by selling them. You can also look for used wet lenses on the Internet.

Now go learn to use these lenses and see the improvement in your photographs afforded by them.

Step 4 – Add a second strobe

Note: You can flip steps 4 and 5, depending on how you want to spend the money.

Once you have some wet lenses – especially the wide angle adapter – you may want to experiment with more creative lighting. A second strobe allows you greater leeway in placement and shadow management. Well worth having.

I am a big fan of using 2 identical strobes. Different strobes, even within the same manufacturer’s line, often have varying color temperatures and probably varying recharge times. That complicates your picture-taking process. Keep It Simple.

Now you can really enjoy creative freedom – sidelighting, backlighting (rim-lighting) and ability to manage shadows. The learning process here is very long and a lot of fun…. enjoy!

Step 5 – Get a housed DSLR (and there was great rejoicing)

Now that you have put everything together, and you are hooked to underwater photography, and you find that it is your system – and not your abilities – that are holding you back, you are ready for a Monstrous Box from Hell. And your strobes and arms, which you have already purchased, will fit right into this system.

If you already have a DSLR or MLC, the choice is easy – find a housing for it (although make sure there is a fish eye lens and a 50-100mm 1:1 macro lenses available for your system).  If you are shooting with a 1-series Canon or Nikon D2/D3, you may want to consider a cheaper, second body. Remember the guideline with underwater housings – it is not a question of “if” you are going to flood, it is a question of “when” – and given that, it is better to flood (read: FUBAR) a relatively inexpensive body as opposed to a top-end body, especially if you don’t have insurance coverage where you live.

If you don’t have a DSLR, first start by selecting a housing. Yes, it is actually better to put the cart before the horse in this case. Housings vary tremendously in price and ergonomics, and not every manufacturer covers every brand. If you don’t have an SLR, then it is best to find the right housing, and then purchase a body that fits into it.

So what goes into finding the right housing? Three things: (1) ergonomics of the housing, which is the single biggest thing you are looking for (2) availability of ports and compatibility with various lenses and (3) price.

Let’s start with ergonomics – this means how heavy your housing is in the water, how much drag it produces, how easily it lets you access the various controls and anything and everything related to usage. Dont ignore any annoying quirks, no matter how trivial. Perhaps it is a chore to install the body or perhaps aligning the zoom gears is a hassle. Right now, you are thinking, it saves me $XXX, I can live with it. A few months down the road, you will be cursing it, I guarantee you. Given how much you have spent already, a littie more is inconsequential. Get it right the first time. Sell your compact, your housing and your wet-lenses, if you want to raise the money.

Availability of ports and compatibility with various lenses is another factor to consider. I use an Aquatica system[at the time of writing the original article] and what got me attracted to them is the fact that they use only 2 ports – a big dome for wideangle, and a flat port for close-ups. All lenses can be used with these 2 ports using spacing rings. That means less gear for me to carry when I travel. Most big brands offer solutions for all the common underwater lenses: ultra-wideangle zooms, fisheyes, standard zooms and macro lenses. However, some newer brands don’t have that compatibility (or it may be coming soon but isn’t here yet). So check first.

All this means that you should get expert advice from a reliable dealer, and if possible, try to touch and feel the equiment before making a decision.

A closely linked step to picking a housing is deciding on lenses. You will need at minimum 2 lenses: macro, a good choice for a first lens because it is relatively easy to get good results with it and ultra-wideangle – something giving a field of view of a 20mm lens (in 35mm terms) at the very minimum – 16mm is even better and a fisheye or near-fisheye (with 175-180 degrees coverage) is best.   My recommended lenses are a Tokina 10-17 fisheye for APS-C bodies, or fisheye primes for full frame or Micro 4/3 bodies.

You may also want to add a standard zoom – either your kit lens or a third-party 17-XX zoom – for general purpose shooting.

For macro, your choices are the 50mm/60mm (very versatile and useful for fish portraits as well) or 100mm macro (better for shooting exclusively macro, but not so useful for other shooting).

Also note that while I have presented the purchase criteria in a linear fashion, it really isn’t a linear process. All the factors work together. Once you have picked your lenses, evaluate your housing choice & port options in light of these options. If your heart is dead-set on a particular lens which is not supported by your selected housing, then you may want to re-think your choice of housings. If, on the other hand, that housing really gets you going, consider an alternative lens. Do some research here.

Once you have all this information, you are ready to purchase your housing. Congrats. Your journey is complete*. Go forth and shoot.

*Of course I am lying like a cheap rug when I say that your journey is complete. Now you are entering the world of customized housings, focus lights, add-on diopters, etc. Say goodby to savings. But it is a great ride, nonetheless!

ILC or Compact – which is best for underwater use?

By Underwater Photography

Best underwater camera for scuba diving

[Updated:  April 12, 2020]

A general assumption seems to be that DSLRs or MLCs (hereafter referred to jointly as ILCs – Interchangeable Lens Cameras) are a natural upgrade to compact cameras for underwater photography. This is reinforced by the fact that every underwater pro you see is lugging $10,000-plus rigs, leading to the natural belief that you cannot really do much with something that costs a tenth of these rigs. Occasionally, you do see some posts in forums defending the compact camera, but a lot of these posts tend to be driven by user bias – a common tendency among all of us to justify our own decisions – rather than an objective analysis of the pros and cons of each system.

The purpose of this article is to give you a balanced view and provide you with the benefits and disadvantages of each system. I can safely say that I am free of bias, because I own & shoot with both a housed ILC system as well as a compact camera setup (and my present compact camera system was purchased after I got the ILC system).

Before we get into this discussion, let us separate 2 terms which are often used interchangeably: quality and usability. Quality, as far as I am concerned, refers to the technical merits of the image – sharpness, contrast, low-noise and ability to produce large prints. Usability [not the best choice of words, I admit… but let’s stick with it for now], on the other hand, refers to how well a system is suited to specific shooting situations – such as low vis, wideangle, macro or any particular composition or effect that you, the photographer, want to achieve.

First, let’s start with ILCs. There is a reason why pros are lugging around those megabuck rigs – they provide results that are superior to those of compact cameras, and do so consistently.
As far as quality goes, the images from a ILCs tend to have greater dynamic range and be more suitable for up-sizing for large prints (even when you compare to RAW files from a compact camera). Lower noise means that you can use higher ISOs, useful under certain conditions. And of course, the bigger sensors of ILCs allow greater control over depth of field. However, the quality difference, while present, is fairly small; not everyone will find it a compelling reason for paying the enormous difference in price, especially if they don’t make large prints or sell to stock agencies.

Dumaguete_Apr2019-81

A turtle, shot with my Olympus ILC in a Nauticam housing with 2 Sea&Sea YS-D2J strobes.   This is a shot i would not have gotten with a compact camera, due to the high contrast between the backlit sun, the darker water and the turtle as it moved up.

Usability, however, is a different thing altogether. The main benefit of housed ILCs is that, whatever choice of subject you choose, they will provide a better solution than compacts. If you want to shoot macro, you have more set-up choices and you are more easily able to achieve high magnifications with an ILC. If you want to shoot wide-angle, you can get stunning, ultra-wide fields of view with some of the current ultra-wideangle lenses out there. If you want to shoot fish portraits, you get auto focus speeed and responsiveness that cannot be matched by any compact camera out there.

At this point, I can see some people about to send me an angry email, listing portfolios of excellent images taken with a compact camera. Please note – I am not saying that compact cameras do not produce good images. In fact, I happily cede that under some circumstances, compact cameras can produce images that are on par with ILC images. However, ILCs will produce higher-quality images in a wider variety of circumstances than compacts. That is a fact, pure and simple.
However, that does not mean that everyone who can afford a housed ILC should get one. Far from it. Remember – your camera system is merely a tool, and as with all tools, you don’t want the one with the best set of specifications, but the one which is best suited to your needs and requirements.

While it is true that ILCs offer better performance across a broader spectrum of shooting opportunities, there is a cost to be paid – primarily, in the amount of effort required to realize this improved performance and the loss of flexibility when it comes to handling other shooting opportunities that may crop up.

20190430_161332

What actually went into taking the turtle photo above:   I followed the turtle up, while keeping an eye on my depth and also making sure i had the composition right, the strobes positioned correctly and the exposure dialled in correctly in rapidly-changing light as the turtle moved shallower.

For starters, a housed ILC rig *demands* your attention. It controls how you pack for a trip. It controls your entire dive (when you are underwater with a housed ILC, you are doing photography and nothing else). The extra bulk and drag of the rig will challenge your situational awareness and diving skills – especially buoyancy – even in calm conditions, let alone currents. And that’s not all. The system requires you to give it attention in the morning before you get on the dive boat, and cuddle with it when you return, checking and lubing O-rings, testing connections and washing/rinsing the controls. In fact, it is very much like adding a boyfriend or girlfriend, without the sex to make up for the trouble (so on second thoughts, perhaps it is like adding a spouse?).

An ILC also limits your choice underwater – you have to select one lens, and are stuck with it for the entire dive. The best results from shooting an ILC come from the extreme wide angle and dedicated macro lenses, so you can only shoot one of these two subjects on a given dive. This commitment can be quite painful sometimes: for example, I had the doubtful privilege of diving with a macro lens while a whale shark cruised by a few meters below me. My friend got some great shots with his compact, while I steadfastly denied that the whale shark had existed.

Now, not everyone considers this loss of flexibility to be a tradeoff. My whale shark incident notwithstanding, I find that I get the best shots when I decide what I want to shoot and spend the entire dive working my choice of subject(s), rather than running around trying to shoot whatever I see. If that means I miss a few shots, so be it… the ones I do get tend to be better.

This mindset and approach, however, requires investing time and effort on the images. You *have* to devote some time to setup and to get the perfect shot… you cant just swoop in, take a couple of shots and swoop off to your next subject (not if you want good photos, anyway). You also need to master the technicalities of exposure & lighting – especially the lighting.  All of this means spending a lot of time on each subject. For example, I recently spend 75 minutes shooting the ghost pipefish below, and I am still not particularly thrilled with this shot.

ghost-pipefish

For a lot of people, the housed ILC is too demanding a tool – be it in terms of travel restrictions, pre/post dive maintenance or in-water demands on both diving skills and photographic commitment. While I have listed a lot of the benefits of a housed ILC system, I must reiterate that you are going to realize those benefits only if you are going to become an underwater photographer (with all the commitments it entails), not a diver who takes photos.
So ask yourself:
– Are you willing to dedicate the entire dive to the pursuit of good images, to the exclusion of everything else?
– Are you willing to spend an entire dive in one patch, getting the lighting, exposure and composition just right?
– Are you willing to spend significant time before and after each dive on your gear?
– Are you able to manage the extra drag of a housed system?
– Are your buoyancy skills perfect enough to allow precise composition through the viewfinder?  And before you answer “yes” here, let me point out that despite having 6000+ dives, I still struggle sometimes with maintaining my placement just so, especially if there is even a mildest of currents
– Are you willing to spend time in learning the technical elements of photography and your system?
– Will you dive often enough to master your equipment? Will you keep diving often enough to retain this mastery?
– Do you have $5000 plus to spend?

If you anwer “no” to one or more of these questions, you may get better results with a compact system. And you will not be alone, nor should you feel that you are condemned to photographic hell.

Most hobbyist shooters would prefer to capture everything a dive throws at them, and not just be restricted to either macro or wideangle – in fact, unless they are shooting for stock or for publication, most people would gladly trade off some small loss of quality for the greater freedom in choice of subjects. This is a big plus in favor of compact cameras. Certainly, I would have had some very nice whale shark photos on file if I were shooting with a compact housing on that particular day.

Another factor to keep in mind is that intermediate photographers or divers may actually get better results from a compact camera. It is easier to get working TTL flash with compact cameras, using a fiber-optic cable, than with housed ILCs. A small compact housing is easier to maneuver in the water, which makes innovative composition easier and less demanding of pin-point buoyancy control. The greater depth-of-field of the lenses mean that they are more forgiving of minor focussing errors.  And in challenging conditions, it is often simply safer to be diving with a small camera than a big monstrous Box From Hell.

The trick with every tool is to understand its capabilities and limitations, and use it accordingly. Here is a photo taken by me in 2001 with an Olympus C3000 digital camera, one of the first compact cameras for which housings were available:

coral grouper

This photo above was taken at medium compression/resolution, with the camera lens zoomed in, auto white balance and on-board flash.   Not bad for a 3 megapixel camera from 2000, eh?

The shot below was taken with a Canon S70 and a $200 strobe (the Sunpak G-Flash, which was actually switched off for this shot):

diver-descending

In this case, i stayed within the limits of the image – i knew that i would not get any usable details on the diver due to the distance -so i chose to shoot it as a silhouette.   Both these images have been published in magazines.

And keep in mind – these sample images are with cameras that are 10-15 years old.    Modern day compact cameras have gotten really good and can provide technically superb shots, as long as you use them within their limitations.

The takeaway from this whole article is that (a) it is possible to get high-quality shots from compact cameras, provided you use them appropriately and (b) depending upon your intended usage, photo skills and dive skills, an ILC may not be the right tool for you.

If you are willing to invest the time and effort, both before/after the dive and during the dive, in getting fewer but better quality images, then a housed ILC is right for you.

If you do not want to go through all that effort, but want something easier to use and handle, then consider a compact. Today’s compacts will certainly yield very high-quality images, suitable for printing and displaying on a wall.

If you think you are ready for a housed ILC but the price tag is too much, consider building your system step-by-step. It may take some time, but you will develop your skills and get some very good images along the way.

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