- What is Scatter?
- How does Buoyancy affect image quality?
- What is macro photography?
- What is a "Fish-eye" lens?
- What is "depth of field"?
- What is an extension tube?
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What is Scatter?
Scatter is … light reflecting back into the lens after bouncing of particles of sand, plankton or any other matter floating around in the water. There are sites where plankton is quite plentiful. Solution, shoot macro. Can’t do anything about that.
Sand is kicked up by you or another diver. If it’s you, lighten up. Loose some lead off the belt and make yourself more neutral. If it’s another diver, educate them or get a different buddy.
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How does Buoyancy affect image quality?
Too much tonnage … is bad! If you’re hanging off a wall trying to shoot, you may be sinking or rising. Less weight makes buoyancy control easier.
A heavily weighted diver when coming upon something of interest likes to settle on the bottom to do it. They are resting due to the excessive exercise demanded to stay level. Now you have a snow storm of sand and debris kicked up by not only the landing, but the take-off also.
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What is macro photography?
Macro photography is the art of shooting an extreme close-up of an animal of section of coral. Terms like 1:1 mean the image is the same size of the subject. 2:1 means the subject is twice as larges as the image and so on.
When these photos get enlarged, you are in for some show. Explosions of color you never thought you’d see as well as the shapes and detail these colors form.
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What is a "Fish-eye" lens?
It is believed that fish have an incredible angle of sight as well as a depth of field. The wide angle lenses, most notably in the 15mm range, thus carry the nickname … fish-eye lens.
When shooting with this lens, you need to be very close to your subject, 1′ to 3′, hold the strobe up and as far away as 3′ to 5′ and usually on high power. If you have a modeling light, put the beam on where you want the flash to highlight your subject and shoot. After composing your image in the view finder, fire away. There will be several tips on this in future blogs.
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What is "depth of field"?
You have a field of vision emanating from the camera lens to as far as the water conditions will allow you to see. Not everything is in focus. That area in your photo that is in focus is referred to as your “depth of field”. It varies by your settings.
Wide angle lenses have a very large area of depth of field. When shooting close-up/macro photography, your depth of field may be an area measuring about 1/8″.
When shooting approximately 3′ away with the equivalent of an f-10 lens opening, you have a depth of field roughly 12″ centered at that 3′ range. Therefore, if your subject is 3′ away, you are in focus from 6″ in front to 6″ in back of that subject.
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What is an extension tube?
Almost anyone shooting film can answer this. An extension tube is a tube of a pre-determined rating or length like 1:1 that mounts to a camera body with the lens mounted on the other end. By placing the lens that distance away from the film surface, the image on the film is the actual size of the animal photographed. The tubes would measure 3:1, 2:1, 1:1 and 1:2.
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