Underwater Photography Courses for Beginners

Underwater Photography is incredible and addictive but how do you know which equipment will give you those dream results?  This page is especially designed from a once-upon-a-time complete beginner who is still the only person in the UK to have achieved so much with a simple compact camera with over 20 years experience in underwater and land photography.

It's so easy to become overwhelmed by so many accessories which are available and on this page I will aim to keep everything as simple as possible, explaining the benefit that different lenses and accessories will make to your compact camera underwater.

So where do you start?

Even though the latest compact cameras have amazing capability for close-up images using the microscope or macro mode, by adding on a close-up lens you can create even closer abstract images, or create distance between yourself and still be able to magnify your subject and get super creative with your lighting techniques.

Macro/Close-Up Lenses

           

 

Wide-Angle Lenses

       

 

Wide angle lenses help you to remain close to your subject when you are underwater, thereby helping you to retain a sharp, colourful image.  They are particularly useful when capturing images of caves, schools of fish, wrecks, reef scenes and larger fishy subjects such as sharks, whales and divers.

Water magnifies our subjects when underwater, making them appear much closer than they actually are.  Using a wide angle lens will reduce the water column, making your images much sharper.  No more blue, blurry, out-of-focus images.   Depending on your compact camera, these lenses will give you a 100 degree field-of-view, great for capturing dramatic scenes.

There are other wide angle lenses which are available too, some offer an 81 degree field of view and others, such as dome ports, offer up to 141 degrees.  For some subjects 81 degrees is plenty to keep your subject sharp and in focus, whereas with others such as huge schools of fish, wrecks or caves, the wider the field of view, the better your resulting image will be.

 

Strobes/Underwater Flash and Video Lights

 

      

 

Just mentioning the word "Flashgun" when I started out in the world of underwater photography used to send shivers up my wetsuit.  Would I as a complete beginner be able to grasp it?  Were the settings complicated?  The answer is absolutely "no" and it's been so amazing to help so many guests over the years starting out on their journey using a strobe for the first time and with a little inch of guidance, see them achieve amazing results too.

Strobes are essential to bring high dynamic vibrant colour to your underwater images.  Although custom white balance is a great tool to also bring colour back to your underwater images, even just one strobe will help to give your images a three-dimensional look and will deliver brilliant results with a wide angle lens.  

This Red Sea reef image was taken with an Fuji F31 compact camera (no manual controls), an INON Close-Up Lens and one INON S-2000 strobe. 

 More information is available on my blog, www.uwcompactcameracoach.com but do feel free to message me with any questions.