Digital Imaging

4 Exclusive Digital Photography Tricks For Taking Underwater Shots

If you are bored of taking pictures of cows, trees, mountains, people and more people, try taking pictures of the world under the sea. Pictures of the marine life and environment would definitely round up your portfolio and give you something divertingly different to focus your camera on. Before you go off on your great sea adventure, though, learn about the purposely built underwater camera, the camera casing, lighting underwater, and the strobe. This article will give you a few digital photography tricks which you can use so you'd get great underwater photographs.

For photography underwater, you need a special type of camera - one that has been built especially for underwater photography. A purposely built underwater camera would cost about $1300. It's a mite expensive but it has its advantages. It's compact and it's built especially for the underwater landscape. Unfortunately, most purposely built underwater cameras use 35mm film. There are some digital cameras that are underwater photography ready but these are even more expensive. If you don't want to spend that much money for the occasional day of underwater photography, just buy an underwater casing for your regular digital camera.

The underwater casing for digital cameras is a cheaper alternative to a purposely built underwater camera. This special casing costs only about $300. Moreover, almost all casings are built for digital cameras so you can use your regular camera for photography underwater. If yours is a digital camera, you can take a lot of pictures before you need to surface. However, the landscape underwater is wider and a regular digital camera's scope might not be sufficient. Your pictures may therefore not have the same quality as the photographs that custom-built underwater cameras can produce. Underwater lighting, however, also has an impact on the quality of your shots.

The main difference between land and underwater photography would be the lighting. It's darker and dimmer underwater - and when it's dark, color is lost easily. Thus, your digital photography tricks that concern lighting when taking pictures on land are not applicable in underwater photography. The colorful fishes wouldn't look too colorful if there isn't any light to illuminate them. Therefore, you need a strobe.

A strobe is much like an underwater camera flash. Most people, however, commit the mistake of making the strobe their primary source of underwater lighting when it should only just be a supplement. Sunlight still gets through underwater; sunlight should still be the main source of lighting and the strobe only the secondary source of lighting. This way, you can get shots that have beautiful and balanced light formations.

The colorful fishes, the myriad corals and the strange yet beautiful underwater world make a great photography subject. Underwater photography, however, takes much more than the usual effort required in other photography projects. Thus, you should make sure that before you get underwater, you're fully prepared to take advantage of the rare photographic opportunities with which you'll be presented underwater so that every shot will be great and make all your efforts worth it.