Underwater Photography

What gear do you need?
Most obviously a camera, now days digital is the way to go offering cheap cameras with large memory cards allowing 100's of photos to be taken. Strobes, torches and various other things such as tripods, lens attachments and colour filters are commonly used as well.

Starting out what to do?
The best advice is to take heaps of photos underwater of everything to practice focus, composition and general use of your underwater camera and all its functions. Look at underwater photos you like and figure out what you like about them (composition, colour or angle) and try to mimic those things you like in your photos. Also shooting to the conditions is good, for example if the visibility is only 5 meters then shooting macro is a good option.

SLR or point and shoot?
If you’re serious about underwater photography an SLR is the way to go. However it's never that simple below are advantages of both.

Some advantages of SLR's are:
Potentially better image quality
Ability to get better lens than most point and shoots
More manual control
Quicker RAW processing

Some advantages of point and shoots are:
Most have good macro functions as well as standard functions
Generally cheaper
Live view (this has only recently began to appear in some SLR's)
Smaller and lighter

Strobes or not?
If you can afford decent strobes and your prepared to learn how to use them then they can be great. However strobes don't make or break underwater photography many very good photos have been taken without a flash or with an in built flash.

Buying a camera?
There's so many makes and models out there that it can be a bit confusing as to which camera to buy. One important thing to remember is not to get hung up on the amount of mega pixels, as this is a lot less important than other things.

Some important things to think about when buying a camera for underwater use are:
Do they make a housing for this model?
What type of batteries does it use and do they last long?
Does the camera have macro mode?
What is the f-stop number? (The lower the number the more light that’s let in)
How wide is it at its widest angle (telephoto is generally never used underwater)
What is the fill flash like?
Does it have manual control?

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