Hi,
I was wondering if there are any recommended/suggested camera settings for UW photography that would work with any camera to shoot proper images?
What is the best shutter speed? Best Aperture? Fixed or manuel set white balance? ISO? Maybe any other setting I didn’t come up with.

For the record; I am using a Canon Powershot A620 with Canon housing so I don’t have any extra flash. Not too fancy camera

Hope anybody can help me. Thanks.

Cheers, Bart

Hi bart,

as on land you need to adjust the settings according to your light situations, too.

But for the start I would recommend to stick to an aperture of 8 or around and a
shutter speed not slower than 1/60th (1/125th should be quite ok too) as you
don’t have any strobe. This should work in most occasion where you shoot parallel
to the bottom into the blue.

/lars

Thanks for the reply Lars. Furthermore I have found some interesting link on Wetpixel-forum which explains some settings with images. Hope this is going to work out well.

Bart

BKlush - 05 September 2007 11:43 AM

Hi,
I was wondering if there are any recommended/suggested camera settings for UW photography that would work with any camera to shoot proper images?
What is the best shutter speed? Best Aperture? Fixed or manuel set white balance? ISO? Maybe any other setting I didn’t come up with.

For the record; I am using a Canon Powershot A620 with Canon housing so I don’t have any extra flash. Not too fancy camera

Hope anybody can help me. Thanks.

Cheers, Bart

Lars settings should get you going.

Have not shot the Canon A620, but with point and shoots I have used (couple of Olympus models) I usually started with 1/100 second, f/Stop 5.6-6.3 and ISO 100 or 200.  (In fact the person who now uses my first point and shoot camera, a Olympus 3040, starts with these settings.  This last trip we dialed ISO up from 100 to 200 since noise still not an issue and lets a little more play in adjusting the f/stop or shutter)

Depending on conditions you may need to tweak from there.  If the shots are bright/blown out increase the f/stop, decrease the shutter and/or descrease the ISO, reverse that if underexposed (higher number f/stops also usually work better if shooting into the sun/towards surface).  Remember also that you need to get close to the subject for the internal strobe to be effective. But of course every camera is a bit different and every shooting situation is different. 

You may also want to take a look at Magic Filters for compact digital cameras.

I have been shooting with the Canon A620 for about two years.  What I would recommend to you is to shoot in aperture priority (Av) mode, use 100 asa (bump it up if you have to) and the highest fstop that will allow you a fast enough shutter speed to get a clear image.  You were probably already doing that, but I can give you one good trick you may not be using.  Make sure you set the drive mode to continuous shooting, hold the camera as still as possible and fire away repeatedly.  I’m not sure how many frames/second it shoots but it is not bad.  You have a better chance of getting a sharp image that way and you can also catch some interesting behavior that is difficult to predict.  If you change modes or turn the camera off you have to reset the camera for continuous shooting,which is a pain in the ###.

I have been really quite impressed with the pics I have gotten in up to 20 feet of water with this rig that cost about $400 total.  Of course I have decided that I must transcend the shallows and house my SLR, which is pretty painful on the bank account, but I am looking forward to learning to use my new Canon 10-22 lens, 8” dome port and mac daddy Ikelite DS-200 strobe!