My First Underwater Photo Shoot

[Imagebuffet]

Today was my first underwater photo shoot. I worked with the same model as Daylon did, but I'm far less professionally prepared. All I had this morning was a Pentax W60. Add to that that I am legally blind without my glasses. I found when I got home that I often did not have the camera pointed where I needed it pointed. I tried to do these shots in bright sunlight, because the Pentax W60 has poor low-light performance. The W60 exhibits image noise even in daylight mild shade.

Here are some sample shots:

1


2


3


Here is one at full-wide angle on the Pentax W60 (28mm eq on a 35mm):

4


Cropping in closer
5


and closer
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You can see that the Pentax W60 has a lot of image noise in the cropped shots.

When I arrived home, I found that my underwater housing for my Canon 20D arrived. It's a neoprene plastic bag with velcro closures, rated to 5 meters. I look forward to being able to use my 20D underwater.

[Imagebuffet]

C&C would be appreciated.

[jamesw]

Hi Richard,

The good first: the model looks reasonably relaxed and her face looks OK. She is managing the fabrics well, but not mastering them to show movement. The angles are good.

To work on: the images are dominated by blue/green light. You need to white balance for that the best you can or else shoot later in the day and use flash, or shoot in a black bottomed pool. The noise in the images is unacceptable and distracting (as you've noted). Your images would also benefit from being closer to the model.

I like the candid above water shot.

Cheers
James

[Imagebuffet]

Originally Posted by jamesw

Hi Richard,

The good first: the model looks reasonably relaxed and her face looks OK. She is managing the fabrics well, but not mastering them to show movement. The angles are good.

To work on: the images are dominated by blue/green light. You need to white balance for that the best you can or else shoot later in the day and use flash, or shoot in a black bottomed pool.

Shouldn't underwater images have the color of the water? I ask, because I haven't decided.

Originally Posted by jamesw

The noise in the images is unacceptable and distracting (as you've noted).

I'm thinking of returning that camera, if I can. I doubt it will ever do any better than what we see here. I'm disappointed, because a few websites said that this camera produces the best image quality of all the underwater P&S, good enough for significant notice.

[jamesw]

It's a point and shoot w/ an acid-tab sized sensor - what do you expect?