Getting Started with Underwater Photography – Part 5 – Into the Water

Congratulations, dear student-reader, you have progressed from someone merely motivated to take pictures underwater to a buoyancy-competent, fully equipped underwater photographer. The next thing you have to know is how to get yourself into and out of the water with your camera in one piece.

Often there are lots of people on a dive boat. These are usually nice people, other divers. Nevertheless, they are all excited about getting into the water, nervous about putting on all their gear, and likely to step on your camera if it’s laying around on the floor. Don’t leave it there. If it’s a short boat ride, hold your setup on your lap. During longer rides in bigger boats, keep it in a crate or in the boat’s freshwater dunk tank. If that tank is too crowded, ask the captain for a second tank.

Unless it’s absolutely unavoidable, don’t open your camera housing on a dive boat. There are too many wet things, open cans of soft drinks and people stumbling around which could wreck havoc on an open housing. If you really have to open it, yell “Camera open, careful pleeeease!” before you do so. Yell like you mean it.

The, jump in the water. Without a camera! It is a much better idea to have someone hand it to you once you are swimming in the ocean next to the boat than to have your housing bounce into you when all of your body mass plus your heavy tank and weight belt are hitting the water surface.

Before you descend, clip your camera onto your BC. There is a variety of connectors and clips available for that purpose – look around in your local dive shop what goes with your housing. You wouldn’t want to watch in horror as your camera drops into the unfathomable abyss after it slipped out of your hand on a wall-dive.  Just recently, on a dive in Kurnell, near Sydney, Australia, I found a functioning underwater camera! Somebody had lost it there, given the amount of algae on it, about a week previously. I will return this piece of underwater photo gear to its rightful owner, if he can tell me what brand & model it is, and what’s written on the camera body. As to balance the Universe and to make up for the disappointment of losing the camera in first place, I’ll provide him or her with a free underwater photo lesson as well! Spread the word & ask around if you know someone who lost a camera there.

Then – dive, enjoy, don’t drown, panic or run out of air, do take pictures, and resurface.

After the dive is over, equally hand your camera back up to a boat-person rather than climb up on the ladder with your setup dangling from your BC.

And the rinsing tank is also a good place to put your camera after the dive – you need to get the corrosive saltwater out of the corners and crevices of your housing.  Turn the camera off, and then press every button while it’s submerged. Leave it in the tank for a few minutes. A quick rinse right after coming out of the ocean is better than waiting until you are back home for a rinsing, when the salty water has already dried and the corrosion started.

A few special considerations apply when going on a shore dive. Take a critical look at the entry point – is it even possible to bring a camera on that dive? Do you have to climb over rocks or crawl along the sand to get in and out of the ocean? How surgy is it and how high are the waves? If you are likely to end up on your knees during the entry or exit (and no worse!), this might be a dive you can still safely do, but without a camera. Also consider having your dive buddy hand you the camera once you are in the water on some shore dives, where you enter with a leap over some rock ridge.

Take good care of your gear! Now you are really ready to photograph below the waves! Next week I’ll write about strobe positioning, make sure to check back.