Two months ago I commented on my new underwater camera outfit, a big change from my former DSR based system. I have now had a chance to play with it underwater and the question arises, was the investment worth it and how was the experience?
In the middle of April we headed off on our annual diving vacation, this time to a brand new location, the island of Negros in the middle archipelago of the Philippines. Our resort was located towards the southern tip of Negros and proved to be further away, at least timewise, than we had anticipated. After spending a couple of days acclimatizing and relaxing in Singapore we took a 9am flight to Cebu. This flight stopped briefly in Davao on the way, making for a five hour journey. So far so good. What came next was unexpected. It was a 140 Km drive south to the ferry port of Lilo-an. It took 4 hours, and then 45 minutes by boat, and another hours drive. We were a tad tired when we finally sat down late that evening for a welcome beer in the hotel bar. It was worth it!
Before moving onto the photographs and equipment, I have to say that we found the Philippines to be the most friendly and relaxing country we have yet to visit in Asia. There was no us and them in the hotel, guests and staff were on easy terms and the service was fabulous, without being simpering.
My first photo from the trip is of the ferry that got us from Cebu island to Negros, it was pretty much the same as a WW2 landing craft, just much bigger. After a modern airliner in the morning the juxtaposition of experience was quite jarring, although it was fun.
The hotel was great, a small resort with its own beach (including beach access house reef for diving), but crucially not cut off from the outside world. Many places we go to have a fence around them and the only locals you meet are bringing a drink or carrying the luggage. Here the local kids were welcome and families could use the resort facilities for a small fee.
This is one of the dive boats moored at the hotel beach.
The purpose of this blog article is to reflect on my underwater photography, but it is hard not to share a few images from the dive boat. This is the small island of Apo a place we dived for a couple of days. When a dive boat arrived the locals paddled out in canoes to try and sell T-shirts and sarongs, not an easy life. 600 people on a tiny space with occasional electric power.
Looking back at Negros, a volcano dominates the skyline. This volcano became a feature of the diving as much of the seabed was covered in dark coloured sand the result of past eruptions, and in places the volcano heated the sand and bubbles of gas filtered up through the sea bed. A unique and fascinating experience diving was to dig my hand into the sand until the heat became too much to bear.
The dive boats were these marvelous trimarans, essentially a large narrow canoe like vessel with outriggers. Lots of space and very comfortable as a dive platform. As a diver the quality of the boat has a larger than expected influence on enjoying a trip, stability against the waves is obvious, but having space for kit, shelter from rain and a source of hot water for a warming coffee or tea is so welcome. When we dive the water is 28 degrees and the air 32, but we are still very cold after 3-4 hours in the water during a days diving.
OK, so much for the vacation photos, this was about the underwater camera. The new camera system was a lot smaller than my old Canon 40D DSLR system and functioned very differently. It was based around the Panasonic GX1 a small mirrorless interchageable lens camera with the same sensor as the Oly EM-5, but with much simpler functionality, no weather sealing, just one dial, no EVF, etc. However, once inside a housing a camera is really an imaging platform, the ergonomics of use are more defined by the housing and than the actual camera.
The Nauticam housing was great to use, the buttons worked fluidly and accessed all camera features, other than the touch screen which was kind of pointless anyway. The biggest adjustment was using the LCD panel to frame the photographs rather than a viewfinder. In some ways this was easier as looking through a scuba mask and then a tiny viewfinder is challenging and I was never able to see the whole frame before taken a picture. However, my eyesight is not what it was and the LCD panel was a little too close for me to comfortably focus my eyes, but only marginally so, I quickly got used to it. Changing settings was a breeze, I shoot manually underwater, so being able to easily switch between shutter and aperture adjustments was important. ISO was a button away, as were most camera functions. It took me a while to figure out the autofocus and how to shift the point of focus and size of focal area. Shooting underwater I have always used a single and very small focal point - the mirrorless system actually did a better job of this than the DSLR, big surprise.
My new Inon D2000 strobes worked as advertised. This was my biggest concern, as the strobes are fired using the main flash on the camera fed via optical fibres to sensors on the strobes. TTL is supported, but how well would this work? The answer was fine, no real issues and a much easier system to maintain than a wired system. I found that very close to the subject I was about a half a stop over, but I prefer to over rather than underexpose underwater photographs, this was not a problem to fix in post. Strobe arm adjustment and placement took a little time to get used to with the new camera, but again no real problem.
The final and most important element in the package was the lenses, I had three for this trip, an 8mm fisheye, a 14mm prime, and a 45mm macro, all Panasonic. The macro was my primary interest and also a worry as I love the 60mm macro from my Canon system, I have taken over 14,000 underwater photos with it! I love the weird tiny creatures that only become revealed through a macro lens, but also creating engaging portraits of the larger animals. The system brought a couple of new capabilities for me. The macro lens I was using imaged 1:1 with a virtual full frame focal length of 90mm, very similar to what I have been used to, however, the sensor was far smaller and with higher pixel density, so in effect the camera magnified subjects by about 2X, versus my old system. Added to that, the macro port for the housing contained a 67mm thread and thus the ability to mount external wet diopters, magnifying glasses, providing roughly another 50% magnification. This proved to be very much more versatile than my old Canon 60mm.
Turning to the photographs. On previous trips I have tried to add an extra dimension to my underwater work, adding narrative and greater contextual information placing the animal into its environment. This time, with a new system, I simply set out to take as beautiful and colourful photographs as I could, forgeting about art and concentrating on the picture. At this point in my photographic education I am a little jaded with theory, I needed a jolt of fun and the challenge of simply trying to take the best photo I could of engaging natural subjects.
As with all nature photography, you are limited by what you can find, but Negros proved to be a generous location for macro material. My first shot was taken on dive number 1. That was a difficult dive, a new mask kept fogging, an experience well understood by any spectacle wearer walking from a winters day into a warm room. Except at 20m under the surface, trying to use a brand new camera and adjusting to diving after a 12 month absence, with little to no vision. After the dive I downloaded the following photo onto my ipad, cropped to a square to suit the subject, uploaded to Flickr, where I shared it with the OCA community. I was impressed by the colour and detail the camera had captured, a good start to my holiday, but this was dive number 1 and I knew more was to come. A day later an email came asking if this could be used by the Big Issue North, came as a massive surprise to say the least. My first ever published underwater photo and one taken in not the easiest of conditions.
Lionfish, so common, yet so beautiful. Not hard to photograph, but not easy to do so well! The challenge is always getting close enough to frame the animal, typically a few inches, but far enough away not to be stung by the spines. Not life threatening as it can be with their close relative the stone fish, but acutely painful and an end to diving for a good while. They can also be very inquisitive, this one really wanted to pose, finning backwards whilst aiming a camera at a poisonous fish is a useful skill to develop.
Dauin proved a great source of very rare animals, frog fish being one example of an animal that is common there and yet extremely rare elsewhere. I liked the green-orange contrast in this photo.
Another prize for the photographer is the ornate ghost pipefish, hard to find and once found very hard to photograph. They never stop moving and placing the cameras focus point on the animal rather than the background is an art of patience. This is one occasion where a narrow aperture can help, indeed most shots of these animals result in a black background due to using f/22 or higher. I prefer a more open shot that provides a sense of space so typically shoot macro at f/8. This is much harder to do as the depth of field becomes very small at close range. This shot was probably 2-3 inches from the subject. The slightest movement of subject or diver kills the shot.
Not the ideal subject for a macro lens, schooling catfish still make for a fun and engaging subject.
Lizard fish, a personal addiction, it's all about the teeth.
Clown fish, the ultimate underwater photographic cliche, but equally irresistible.
White-eyed moray and my favorite shot from this trip. I am not overly interested in the increasing treatment of animals as if people by modern TV shows, but this guy just has personality. "Now where did I leave my teef". I will admit to a heavy amount of processing on this shot. The original had a lot of back scatter caused by the strobes illuminating suspended particles in the water. I used a brush to darken the area around the eel to eliminate the particles. Lightroom is a powerful tool.
Another interesting subject, a Mantis shrimp. Odd looking and very aggressive, these animals will attack a camera that gets to close and are strong enough to punch through the glass port on the lens housing, killing a camera. If they hit your hand broken bones will result. One hit Heidi's housing, but no damage... However, they are amazingly strange and a favorite subject.
There is a debate among divers about the increasing presence of cameras on dives. Paralleling the omnipresence of smart phone cameras, almost every diver now has a compact camera in a cheap plastic housing (in fact you can now get underwater housings for iPhones - mad). The problem with this is that the etiquette of underwater photography, well understood by professionals and committed amateurs, is not a part of these guys world. They fin from place to place, excited by the latest discovery, chasing the exotic, leaving a wake of kicked up sand and destroyed coral. Cameras are moving from a source of good, informing the world of the fragility of the underwater world, to becoming a source of destruction.
This drives me nuts, but there is little I can do other than a friendly comment after the dive. This trip one diver was so obtuse that she informed me that the ocean was a free place so she could do what she wished. Well she got so close on one shot to what I was photographing she did not notice that there were two subjects both extremely poisonous and the second hidden one directly under her camera. I guess I should have let her stupidity reward her with a few days of pain and possible disablement, I didn't, I warned her, but even then no thanks or a sense of learning a lesson. At the age of 70 with 700 dives she should have figured this out by now. Grrrr
My point, other than a rant at the ignorant, is that properly used a camera begins to change how a person looks at the world underwater as it does above. The view through lens illuminates and clarifies. The next photo is of a very cryptic small crustacean, maybe an inch across, probably a squat lobster, but not in any book I have. Almost invisible against the sand, only a macro photographer carefully surveying the sand would ever find it and then be able to see it like this. The crowd madly chasing the "trophy" animals miss these fascinating tiny animals...
My lasting and true love underwater, a Nudibanch...
It was not all macro, however, about 15km off shore was the island of Apo surrounded by healthy coral reefs. This was a chance to give the fish eye a workout. I have never used such a lens underwater, the field of view is huge and the curved lines can be disturbing. However, underwater there are few straight lines and the lens curvature is less noticeable. Another feature of a fish eye is an immense depth of field coupled with the ability to focus a few centimeters from the lens, making it into a strange form of macro lens. As an example a couple of Nudibranchs make more Nudibranchs on a coral block. Impossible to shoot with any other type of lens. My lighting could be better, but this illustrates the animals and their envornment.
Another feature of the fisheye is the ability to make something close look further away than it is. This turtle was inches away and yet the fisheye allowed me to frame her and the dive master in the background. The water visibility was poor and so the sun burst has diffused providing a kind of milky background that is not very pleasing. The starburst effect of the sun breaking through the waves, so beloved of underwater photographers needs very clear water.
The next two images also show the descriptive power of the lens and leave me in awe of the new camera systems ability to render colour.
Finally, the fisheye has an almost magical ability to capture divers and boats. Here I am in shallower water, roughly 5-7m deep, permitting a much better defined sun burst, but more importantly capturing the divers and the boat. The tank hanging down was there for a dive master undergoing training in diver recovery. I think there is potential in diving to create a narrative sequence about the ocean that perhaps could be used for this course. Not sure if it is strong enough or whether I can time the work to the course.
Overall it was a great experience, the new mirrorless camera worked well underwater and the lenses are certainly up to the demands placed on them. I loved having a system so small and easy to transport. I think the images justified the change.
Although my goal was one of simply creating some colourful photos, I could not help a final image that commented on the fragility of the reef, using dark contrast to comment. This is a reef area that was wrecked during a recent typhoon with debris washed into the coral shattering it. Reef systems are organic places that come and go over time, they are routinely destroyed and then regenerate, however, the destruction is now far exceeding the ability to recover and I do fear that by the end of my life there will not be much left to see anymore.
Ah well, that was fun, back to Social Documentary!
