Here's an interesting article I found in Underwater Photography magazine with some good tips on using and getting the best results with a digital compact camera underwater. UWP Mag is a free web magazine (PDF format), and this article is taken from Mar/Apr 2006 Issue 29. The PDF version also shows some photos to illustrate some of the results.

TRULY COMPACT

By Alexander Mustard with Veruschka Matchett

It will only take you a few minutes browsing the internet to realise that digital compact cameras are capable of taking stunning pictures underwater, which are often every bit as good as those from larger more expensive DSLRs. However explore a bit deeper and you’ll soon find that to get the best out of a digital compact setup most photographers are adding a couple of strobes, strobe arms, synch cords and external supplementary wide-angle or close-up lenses. And pretty soon their rigs are anything but compact!

I would never dispute that these accessories make a massive difference to the images that compact cameras can produce. But not every compact camera owner wants to spend the extra cash or have the hassle of dragging that lot around the world or, for that matter, a divesite. The aim of this article is to look at how to improve your pictures from a basic compact, without adding any expensive external accessories, so the camera remains small enough to slip in and out of a BC pocket. In other words a truly compact compact!

The weapon of choice for this article was a Nikon S3, a camera I bought because it would fit easily in to the pocket of my jeans on land, rather than for any underwater photographic capability. On the plus side, being slim on land also meant that the housing is tiny and certainly lives up to the name of compact. My main use for this camera underwater is as a prop in model shots, but I have to admit that I really enjoyed shooting it on the couple of dives I made for this article! This camera doesn’t offer much in the way of manual control, so all the pictures here are shot in AUTO, but there are several ways of tricking it into doing what you want. Understanding how to make a compact do what you want is one of the fundamentals to getting better images.

The obvious place to start is with close up/macro photography. Nearly all digital compacts have very good close focusing abilities, which makes this type of shooting fairly straight forward. Once you have got in nice and close to the subject the internal flash will be powerful enough to illuminate the subject and because of the small amount of water between the camera and subject, backscatter won’t be a big problem. Furthermore the camera’s electronic metering should be able to deal with judging the exposure in this relatively simple shooting situation, so these shots should be point and shoot simple.

Generally for close up shooting I would suggest zooming the lens to the widest setting and then getting as close to the subject as possible to fill the frame, for the reasons stated in the previous paragraph. However, some cameras will overexpose pictures if you get too close. If your camera does this there are two easy solutions. The elegant one is to back away a bit and then zoom the lens in to achieve the same framing as before. The extra camera to subject distance will dissipate some of the light from the flash and will allow the camera to judge the correct exposure. The less elegant solution, which is the one I prefer because it is less fiddly (and I am lazy), is just to slide my finger slightly over the flash, which has the same effect in reducing the flash output to manageable levels. Compact housings with chunky ports can cause shading problems for the flash at very short working distances. This problem is also be cured by backing away a bit and then zooming in.

The next step is controlling background exposures – getting the black or blue water colour you desire. If your camera offers manual control over aperture and shutter speed, then this is easy. Simply slow down your shutter speed for blue and speed it up for black. For the fully automatic camera this is where you have to get creative and trick the camera into doing what you want. Most compacts will record black backgrounds by default when set in macro mode where the flash is the dominant light source (unless you are in very bright shallow water). So to get blue backgrounds I often use the “night portrait” flash mode, which basically extends the exposure to record the blue. Alternatively you can leave the camera in standard “flash on” and influence the water colour by the angle you shoot. Downward cameras angles shooting into open water give dark backgrounds and upward camera angles aimed towards the surface give lighter colours.

If you are choosing a camera from scratch I would suggest getting one with manual control over aperture and shutter speed and also a more powerful inbuilt flash than my S3 (which never has the overexposure problem!). Also a few cameras will turn off their internal flash when in macro mode, and these are probably best avoided if you are planning to use them without accessory strobes or close-up lenses.

Fish photography is a fairly simple step on from close up/macro, and the techniques remain pretty much the same. The key to successful fish photography with a compact is in subject selection. Try to stick with cooperative slow moving subjects: frogfish, scorpionfish, seahorses, moray eels etc will produce much better results that chasing after a fast moving jack or browsing parrotfish. The other important point is to shoot what is common and cooperative on a dive, rather than go in and spend a whole dive looking for a specific creature, which when you eventually locate it really doesn’t want to be photographed.

So far we have been playing it safe and working to the strengths of the compact. Where the basic compact traditionally struggles is in shooting scenery and divers. The internal flash is pretty much useless here because it is not powerful enough to cover such a large area, and even it was the additional camera to subject distance will increase backscatter from the flash to unacceptable levels. This is the classic conundrum that drives people to their credit cards! The accepted solution is to add a wide-angle accessory lens and a strobe or two on long arms, where they are able to illuminate the subject without illuminating particles in the water and causing backscatter. This solution really works, but it comes at a hefty price and your compact camera will no longer be… well compact.

The alternative approach is to switch off your flash and try a filter. It is a different way of shooting and requires learning how to set the white balance on your camera, but to me this seems a small price to pay in return for the transformation it makes to your images. For these tests I used a Magic Filter, which would have cost me just £19, although actually for me it was free for reasons disclosed in UWP 26! This filter was designed for use with DSLRs, but works very well on compact digitals too, as long as they have a manual, custom or preset WB setting. To attach it to the camera I just taped it to the front of the lens, which took about 2 seconds, and slid the camera into the housing.

The first advantages you will notice with the filter are that the battery life of your camera is greatly improved and you won’t get any condensation problems, which are caused by the internal flash heating up the inside of the housing when it fires. But what is really remarkable are the types of images you can now take. To shoot wider scenes you just back away a bit (as you would on land) to fit in the scenery you want, and because you are not using strobes you do not have to worry about flash fall off and backscatter. OK, there is a limit to how far you can back away – a good rule of thumb is to never shoot from further than 20% of the visibility (so in 10m/ 0ft viz, you can back off to 2m or 6ft). But in reasonable diving conditions you will be able to shoot reefscapes, schools of fish, features of wrecks and divers. In full colour.

The main technique you will have to learn is how to set the white balance of your camera manually, so that the filter will produce the best results over a range of depths. The details of setting the white balance vary from camera to camera, but basically involve taking a test shot of the reef at the depth you want to photograph and the camera does the rest and calibrates the WB from that. This only takes a couple of seconds once you have practiced it and when it is done you can snap away as if you were shooting on land, getting colourful shot after colourful shot.

It is worth bearing in mind that you will need to shoot with the sun coming from behind/above you to illuminate the subject evenly and secondly you need to have good buoyancy skills so you can hold the camera still to avoid blurry images. Also filters tend to work best at shallower depths above 15m/50ft, so this isn’t a technique for deeper dives. On the plus side auto exposure and auto focus will take care of everything and images are point and shoot simple to take.

In conclusion, a bit of thought about techniques and an inexpensive filter can really transform your compact camera into a versatile tool for underwater photography, without the expense and bulk of buying accessory lenses and strobes. However, if you are keen on your photography then you will inevitably want the flexibility offered by these accessories. But maybe if you are looking at spending this much, you might be better off considering a DSLR, because once you have added these accessories to a compact, the name is hardly appropriate.

The full colour article (with photos) can be downloaded from www.uwpmag.com (Issue 29)

I've been in Bali for a week now in what was a very rushed trip. The oppurtunity came up so I took it. I spend the first 5 days or so up on the east coast looking around and managed to get 5 dives done.  I'm now in Kuta for a bit of relaxing before heading out on a liveaboard to Komodo for a week of serious diving.  Hopefully I will come back with a few good photos to put on here. Anyway, I'll keep this one short (the internet will cut out at any second).  Will write all about the Komodo trip when I get back.

According to this newspaper article in the Sunday Times Newspaper on the weekend, a new deep diving record has been set at 1720m of water - pretty impressive.  I was on this dive, so I know for fact that it is a typo. It should read 17-20m.  Another reason why you shouldn't believe everything you read in the paper!!!  I think it should also read that my brother Dave was 3 crays up on me for the season, not "the lads had caught only three for the season".  The rest of the facts seem to be correct though. 

My brother sent this photo in (for the fishing section) the day after he caught the cray. Five weeks later it finally got published.  A few guys at work had a good laugh about the crazy depths we'll go to just for a single cray. If anyone breaks this new deep diving record any time soon, I will be very impressed

If you want to see this photo (and another photo) of this cray in colour, checkout my post The Crayfish.

I thought that I might cop a bit of criticism for my post The Relevance Of Advanced Diver Training, but so far so good. Thanks Gracie and Santafejoe for your comments. All comments, good, bad or other are always welcomed (cause I always reserve the right to delete them if I don't like them  - not that I will)   I'd just like to point out again that I believe advanced training is good, I'm not knocking it. I just thought that the analogy used in the article was the wrong one. I've gone on to do my Advanced Course, Rescue Course and numerous others, and there is no doubt that I have benefited from them (one of my favourites being the Rescue Course). Even after doing alot of these courses though, I know that there are still skills that I lack. I don't pretend to be a great diver because I've done these courses (I am the first to admit I have plenty of bad habits). Confidence is a good thing in diving and this is enhanced during the Advanced course, but I have met a few novice divers that think that because they have done Advanced Diver courses that they are competent divers when they clearly are not. Thankfully these divers are in the minority Gracie made a good point in her comment when she said "occassionally you find people who have hundreds and hundreds of dives logged as OW divers, and they've got more experience and knowledge than a lot of other people. To those guys, I can see the adv course being a waste of time and money at that point"  At the end of last year I did the Deep Diver course. The one and only reason for doing this course is that there are 1 or 2 dive shops/charters around that won't take you on dives deeper than 30m unless you have the Deep Diver certification or you are a DM or higher (I've actually met DM's who haven't been deeper than 24-25m). There has been one site I've wanted to dive for a long time but couldn't because I didn't have the neccessary certification. I've done more dives deeper than 30m than I care to count, many of them logged, yet this sometimes still isn't enough. Someone who learnt to dive 2 weeks ago could do the dive and I couldn't (and I have seem this happen), all because they had the Deep Diver certification. Shouldn't experience at least count for something??? These circumstances are thankfully few and far between, but they do happen. Admittedly liability can be an issue when it comes to diving on charter boats, but proof of experience and signing the Waver Form should be enough to let an experienced diver dive deeper sites. And for anyone who is thinking about going on to do the Advanced Course, I say "go for it" It is going to open up a whole new world of diving for you that you probably never knew existed. Have fun and enjoy you new experiences. Damo

I apologise in advanced for what will be a long post, but I recently read an article in a Dive Magazine that I thought was poorly written. I will first let anyone who is interested read the article and put my case forward. 

The article is entitled "Advanced Training - Why Bother?"

"Mrs Lemming is an Open Water Diver with 846 logged dives. Why on earth would she need to think about doing her PADI Advanced Open Water course? After witnessing her and her husband/dive buddy attempting to remove her weight-integrated BCD in order to free her trapped ocky on a Drift dive… in a 4 knot current… at  25m… on a 150m wall… in the Maldives… you may think that some extra training may be useful.

The most important thing for any newly qualified diver is to keep on diving. Diving skills don’t improve sitting on the couch watching the Discovery Channel. Equally important is to experience new environments and develop dive planning skills. This is essentially what the Advanced Open Water Diver course is all about.

The Adventures in Diving Program, which the Advanced Open Water Course is part of, is designed with the new diver in mind. By focusing on different environments (night, drift, boat, deep or wreck) and tasks (navigation, buoyancy, photography or search and recovery) your diving abilities improve whilst learning about aspects of diving not covered in your Open Water course.

Of all the dive courses available to you, Adventures in Diving is the most relaxed and flexible. There are bits and pieces to read up on but there’s no exams or classroom time, it’s all about the diving, gaining new experiences, making new friends and finding new buddies.

It is a bit unfortunate that the title “Advanced Diver” conjures up the image of a former Navy Seal with 1000s of dives racked up and an equal number of hoary old diver stories to go with. Nor does it help when your more experienced mate tells you that you’re “not ready” to be an “Advanced Diver”. Trust me… if you are an Open Water Diver you are ready!

Back to Mrs Lemming... George, her husband has 546 dives logged in his log book. Being  bigger and stronger of the two, he feels able to take charge, tell her what to do and generally plan her dives for her. So how did she manage to get in the water with her ocky trapped under her arm between her and her bcd backpack?

Being taught to drive a car by your husband/wife/mother/father/best mate is not a great idea. This is also true of diving. No doubt your buddy’s skills are great, but when was the last time he or she ran through a lights out drill on a night dive, searched for a lost object or practiced an Out of Air Ascent? (By the way if the answer is “all three last night” then you really don’t want to be following their advice!).

Dive instructors, on the other hand, regularly practice their skills while teaching these courses. They have experienced many of the common problems and concerns that arise in different diving environments and are well prepared to deal with them.

The Lemmings are still struggling, so the dive guide, Heike, goes up to help out. By now Mrs Lemming is start to get panicky. Her BCD gets sorted first, then the occky is extracted and everything is looking good until…Mr Lemming decides that Heike has interfered enough and pushes her out of the way and shoos her off.

So what exactly happens on an Advanced Open Water course? Usually the first dive of the course is the Navigation dive. There are a few tasks to cover underwater. First you need to be able to estimate distances, so we get you to swim 30m while timing you and getting you to count the number of kick cycles it takes. Once you know how long/how many kicks it takes to cover 30m then you’ll be able to estimate other distances in the future.

Next you have to navigate a set pattern (usually a square) and then use natural navigation techniques to get you back to your starting point. Bear in mind you’ve got to do this while controlling your buoyancy and making sure you don’t lose sight your buddy or get lost. Many new divers feel disorientated underwater and are amazed at how their dive guide/instructor gets them back to the line. With a few simple techniques and knowing the classic mistakes that people make when navigating your diving will be a lot less stressful. Let’s face it… it’s always nice to know where you are.

The rest of the Lemmings’ dive goes without incident, although it does only last for 19 minutes as they’ve used up so much air performing their  underwater acrobatics at 25m plus.

The Advanced Deep Dive is often the dive that people are most concerned about. It can provide the most fun, especially for the instructor who gets to witness the effects of nitrogen narcosis. It also enables you to take part in deeper dives in the future as you become licensed to dive to 30m instead of 18m.

As well as monitoring your air supply/bottom time and completing a safety stop at the end of the dive, on the Deep Dive you are given a timed task to complete. You are first timed on the surface and then timed again underwater in the hope that this will demonstrate how nitrogen narcosis slows you down. This doesn’t always work out as planned, often people are faster underwater as mild narcosis can have a relaxing effect.

The effects of nitrogen narcosis are usually not too extreme at 30m however, they are still there. Don’t believe anyone who tells you that they “don’t get narked until 50m” as this is just not true. Your response to narcosis can vary from dive to dive. You may feel nothing at all one day and be off your face the next!

I spoke too soon. Back on the main boat, the Lemmy’s have discovered that one of their cameras has developed a leak. This may have to do with Mr Lemmy deciding to clean and assemble it last night… in the dark…holding a small torch in his mouth to see by. Maybe he’s looking for a different insurance claim now that his wife is safe and sound??

The flexibility of the Advanced course is a great way to have a dabble in different types of diving that may interest you. You can have a go at Underwater Photography or night diving or wreck diving or Enriched Air diving or search & recovery. There are loads to choose from, although it’s a bit tricky to go ice diving or altitude diving in WA!

Okay… so why are the Lemmys, despite their hundreds of logged dives so crap in the water.

As it turns out, 822 of Mrs Lemmy’s 846 dives and 521 of Mr Lemmy’s 546 dives have all been made on the same 7m shore dive which is a reef, 10 minutes swim off the coast of  in the Red Sea. Consequently they have vast experience of diving in virtually no current… with 50m+ visibility… and 25o – 28o water temperature. No wonder they cannot cope with unforeseen conditions or events.

If you haven’t already, consider taking your Advanced course. It’s fun, flexible and an inexpensive way to improve your scuba diving skills, learn new techniques and reinforce old ones."

I have to disagree with the article. The author uses “Mrs Lemming” as her subject to suggest why Advanced Training would be beneficial.  In Mrs Lemming’s case I would have to disagree that Advanced Training would have been beneficial. The author states that Mrs Lemming had logged 846 dives, admittedly 822 of these dives  where “on the same 7m shore dive…”. Regardless of where the dives were conducted, Mrs Lemming still had 846 dives of experience behind her.

The PADI Instructor Manual states “A diver who completes the Deep Dive, the Underwater Navigation Dive and three additional Adventure Dives (five in total) earns the Advanced Open Water certification”. (Adventure Dives consist of the following; Altitude, AWARE – fish identification, Boat, Deep, Diver Propulsion Vehicle, Drift, Drysuit, Enriched Air. Multilevel and computer, Night, Peak Performance Buoyancy, Search and Recovery, Underwater Naturalist, Underwater Navigation, Underwater Photography, Underwater Videography, Wreck). Further more, the prerequisite for the Advanced Open Water certification is “proof of an entry-level scuba certification with a minimum of four open water training dives”. Therefore you can go from never diving before  to Advanced Certification and only have completed 9 open water dives in total. How can this be more beneficial than 846 logged dives?  Even if you count the 822 dives that Mrs Lemming did at the one location as one single dive, she still has 25 dives to her name. This is more than double the amount of dives you need to be an advanced diver.

Now lets look at the PADI Advanced Diver Program. Two dives in the program are compulsory – the Deep Dive, and the Navigation Dive.  Now could have these dives helped Mrs Lemming? Nowhere in either of these two training dives do you practice any of the skills that haven’t already learnt on the Open Water Course. On the Deep Dive you only gain limited knowledge about diving a little bit deeper (For training purposes you only need to go to 18m for the dive to be classified as a Deep Dive, whereas in the Open Water Course, Dives 3 and 4 can be conducted down to 18m). The skills you learn in the Navigation Dive are basic to say the least. Further more, the recommended depth for the Navigation Dive is 6-9 meters. Mrs Lemming should be fairly proficient diving in these depths, as she has already done 822 dives at 7m. The rest of the Adventure Dives in the Advanced Dive course, go onto teach (and I use the term teach very loosely) about specific areas of diving. With the exception on maybe the Dry Suit dive and the Peak Performance Buoancy dive, no new skills are learnt. And even with these two dives mentioned (Dry Suit and Buoyancy), you wouldn’t become skilled at either of them in just one dive.

Now lets see where Mrs Lemming went wrong. The only thing I can see where Mrs Lemming went wrong, is that she didn’t do a Buddy Check. This is a basic skill learnt in the Open Water Course. Having said that, I doubt that even 99% of certified divers conduct a buddy check before a dive. Even Dive Masters and Instructors don’t conduct proper Buddy Checks unless they are teaching/assisting in a course. Both Dive Masters and Instructors should however, keep a good eye on what is going on around them. Should the Dive Master on Mrs Lemming’s dive, or even the author (an Instructor who witnessed Mrs Lemming’s predicament) have noticed that her “ocky”  was trapped before she even entered the water??? Maybe the author should write an article about the importance of Buddy Checks. The example of Mrs Lemmings dive would have been put to better use in such an article.

I don’t know the author of the article personally, but I do know of and have met the author on at least one occasion. Well credential, and no doubt very experienced, I believe the article was written more for commercial purposes aimed at new divers.

I’m not saying that Advanced training won’t improve your diving, and I do believe there is good reasons to further your dive training, but I do think that just because you go on to Advanced training and beyond, it doesn’t automatically make you a good diver. Becoming a good diver comes with time and experience, and experience doesn’t always come from just going onto do more courses. Experience comes from actually getting out there and diving in as many different conditions and environments as you can.

I checked my emails this morning and had received a very good question from Jason Dell. Before attempting to answer the question, here is what he wrote