Text & Photography By John Lee

While it may be fair to say that the for the surface photographer the digital photography “revolution” is nothing new, from the point of view of the underwater photographer it is really only just beginning.

I’ve been into underwater photography from the moment I first ventured into my local swimming pool to take my first diving lesson - more years ago than I’d care to remember. Over the years I built up my experience and kit through trial and error and listening to what worked for other people. My standard camera system has been built around the Nikonos system that offered everything I needed. I watched the development of the digital cameras, but I was an out and out film man - period. The Nikonos cameras may only be rated to 60m (we’ve had them deeper) but that covered the bulk of my diving.

I got to the point were I knew that on any given role of film I’d have at least half a dozen shots that I could consider to be “decent” but this had come after countless dives to built up that level of confidence in you work.

I suppose the turning point came after a weeks wreck diving off the Normandy coast. As the wrecks were relatively shallow and the water appearing quite clear it seemed like the ideal place to take some really good shots. Virtually every dive would have me rattling off a full slide film. We had some excellent dives and I was excited when I bundled all the films up and sent them off for processing. When the slides came back I eagerly sat over the viewer only to be disappointed by slide after slide after slide. What we hadn’t seen in the water were very fine silvery specs that back-scattered the flash back to the camera like the strips on a high visibility jacket. I was gutted all that work (and money) for very little result. The only concillation were a series of available light shots that I’d taken that were moody and atmospheric and showed the wrecks well.

From that point onwards I started to look seriously at the digital alternative, maybe even just as a back-up to the slide work, at least I’d get to know what the underwater conditions were like after the first dive. However as I looked around I started to see that there was a viable alternative. There are of course there are the high end digital cameras like the Canon EOS *** and the Nikon D1 that have been developed for the pro’s but the camera alone will set you back several thousands of pounds and by the time you’ve added lenses, housing, ports and arms etc you’re into a five figure sum. I wanted something mid range to compliment the system I had built up - and I found several alternatives.

First of all it’s worth just outlining some of the background on digital systems. Digital photography employs a camera just like film photography, but instead of capturing the images to film, digital media stores the photos for retrieval with a computer or for display on a television set. Some digital cameras can be connected directly to a printer device negating the need to view them on screen. The cameras ability to process this information and the resultant quality is generally expressed by its mega-pixel rating.

Like anything electronic this technology is getting faster and more powerful by the day. A couple of years ago capturing images at 768x1024 pixels (one megapixel) was considered good, a 1200x1600 (two megapixels) high standard and 1536x2048 (three megapixels) to be top of the range, something that would be thought of as standard today.

Most cameras save images to a flash memory card and use compression to maximize the number of photos that can be stored on these cards. It is worth considering how many photos can be stored without switching cards, whether it is enough, and whether you can afford additional memory cards. If you are planning an expedition and don't expect to have access to a computer, this becomes a real issue. I know that the PC or laptop computer are standard issue equipment on most charter boats but will the skipper give you access and how can you retrieve the images even if he will?

A large image to give a good quality A4 print will take (***) of memory. On a 132mb memory card that means you can store (***) images until it is full. Of course you have the option to delete files but that is defeating the object. To be sure that you will be able to take all the pictures you want without running out of memory you will probably be looking at owning two or three memory cards. Of course if you are looking at recording shots for use on electronic media (computer screen presentations, web-sites etc) then you can record around (***) shots at (***) resolution on a single memory card.

Most cameras come with both an optical viewfinder and an LCD display. This may be fine for the topside where you can use the viewfinder to compose the shot but underwater you really benefit from the ability to composing your photos with the LCD display on the back of the camera/housing ... until the batteries go dead. Digital cameras use batteries like a 4x4 uses petrol. I’ve found that you are lucky to get one dive out of a set of freshly charged (********) batteries. You will need several sets of spare batteries and again, the ability to charge them.

Most digital cameras, unlike film cameras suffer a momentary delay from the time you push the button until the time the actual photo is captured, and an even longer delay until you can take the next photo due to the memory write process. We found that on our first trials with the camera, the diver would often move just as the shot was being recorded - this was overcome by my grunting into the mouthpiece telling the diver that I was about to take the shot.

Your ability to light the subject is also more critical in digital photography. Your camera needs light to be able to perform a number of control tasks from working out the exposure f-stop and “shutter” speed through to just plain focusing. Because I’ve always been used to lugging a camera around I’ve been using helmet-mounted lights for years. The problem is though that these lights shine right onto the LCD screen and make it hard to view. A small “spotting” torch mounted on the cameras strobe will be neither use nor ornament so you do need a small hand held torch with a reasonable beam to light your subject.

Okay I’ve gone through a few of the negatives, what are the positives? Well as mentioned earlier, the biggest advantage I find is with the immediacy of the system. As soon as you have taken the shot you can see if it is well composed, well lit and in focus. You then have the ability to make changes; do I open up a bit more (make the shot lighter with a bit less depth of field) do I stop down (make the shot darker and bring more detail out of the background) or should I do both and pick the best shot topside!

You will also be able to judge the water clarity - too much backscatter - forget the flash (if you’re able to) and go to available light. You can change position, re-compose the shot try different things until you get it right. Most of the time we aren’t looking to bring back a work of art, we are trying to achieve good quality shots that we can show to our friends that reflect the dive we’ve just completed. If you are looking for good shots to support an article then you can keep at it until you achieve the right shot.

The real beauty of digital photography is the fact that it will make taking good quality underwater photos more accessible to more people. There can be nothing more off-putting than coming back from a great weekend to find shot after shot badly composed, under/overexposed or out of focus. It isn’t that you can just walk out into the garden and try to correct your mistakes it may be a week or two before you can get back in the water. I know that many divers have tried underwater photography and have fallen at this first fence. I believe that any competent diver and someone able to take a good photograph on the surface should be well on their way after only a weekend using a digital system.

Having looked around the market and considered various camera and hosing options, I went for the Olympus 4000 camera housed in a Tetra housing. This gave me a camera capable of taking 4 mega-pixel images and a housing rated to 100m that wasn’t much larger than my Nikonos system and allowed me to mount my existing Sea & Sea strobes with the Tetra housings bulkhead connecter. The hosing allows for virtually all of the cameras functions to be operable giving you the opportunity to play around with your system underwater.

I spent a week up in Scapa Flow getting used to the system and it would be fair to say that it did take a bit of getting used to the system and its ways and I was a little bit “all fingers and thumbs” at first but a few days in and I knew what to do to get the shot I wanted.

The final thing to consider with digital photography is the storeage of your images back on dry land. The higher resolution cameras provide clearer and sharper, photos with more detail, the bad news is they require three times as much storage space on a computer. A weekend’s diving on some scenic wreck may end up with nearly 100 shots after the last dive. Each of my 4 megapixel photos uses about three quarters of a megabyte of storage, so I’ve got 75 megabytes of photos from just one weekend.

New personal computers typically come with built- in hard disks perhaps 40 gigabytes (40 x 1024 megabytes) in size so 75 megabytes, once a month or so, over a few years might not fill up your disk, but storage does become a big issue when you start thinking about the amount of diving you get through in a season. Hard disks can fail and since you won't have your digital memories in retreaveable plastic sleeves or boxes you will have to backup of all your photo files. You don't want to be looking for that classic shot of a liners bow only to find you lost it back in the “crash of 03”.

You’ll need to store your photo files by date and back them up on a regular basis. Perhaps keep them in a digital photo album or scrapbook. Nobody seems to know for sure what media is best for long-term archiving of personal computer files. Until recently, it was believed that the CD ROM (write once CDR) but now we're hearing about chemical breakdown of CDR's after a few years rendering them unreadable. Now what?

My advice would be to maintain three copies of all your digital photos. The original on your computer's hard disk, a copy on another hard disk that you use as an external backup and a third on some kind of removable media such as CD ROM, Zip disk or DAT tape. View your photos once a year on each of these media to be sure they're still readable and stay current with the technology. If, in five years, you can't buy a Zip drive any longer, transfer your photos to newer media before it breaks down.

Hopefully the combination of the ease of use and the quick learning curve of digital camera systems plus their relative cost and overall size will encourage a whole new band of underwater photographers.