Is Lighting Important in Underwater Photography?

Underwater photography can be quite a difficult task. You might think that it is the same as all photography, but will find the pictures to be severely overexposed or underexposed due to lighting difficulties. Too much light will result in colors being too white and not true to the subject you are photographing and too little light results in dark colors in the photos. The deeper you are in the ocean, the more difficult the lighting becomes and taking photographs in underwater caves can prove to be a nightmare.

To produce quality underwater photos, it is essential to understand the inner workings of your camera. The total amount of light used for exposure in your photo is controlled by the shutter cycle. A long exposure captures more light with less intensity and a series of short shutter cycles captures less light with more intensity. This is the same principal of taking outdoor photos with sunlight taken into consideration, which may overexpose or underexpose your picture.

I find that a good underwater digital camera with TTL (through-the-lens) metering will take all of the guesswork out of your artistry. This type of camera has an auto exposure lens which measures the light through the lens as you are seeing the subject and it chooses the correct exposure for you. A SLR (single-lens reflex) camera is generally digital for the utmost clarity and includes the quality of TTL. This type of camera is great for beginners with it's no fail properties. This camera will meter the light with an imaging sensor that is located under the mirror. It uses light metering and autofocus to obtain perfect underwater photos. Most of the advanced models have a bracket or dot that is visible through the lens and you place the dot or brackets on or around the main subject of your photo. This is where the lighting and exposure is set for that area of viewing. For example, if you are looking at a group of fish and one in particular is your main subject, then you use the dot or brackets to focus on that particular fish.

I definitely recommend these types of cameras to the beginning underwater photographer for success. Many people call this a point and click camera because you don't have to adjust anything. The camera does all the work for you and it is definitely worth it's weight in gold when capturing your memories of beautiful underwater fish and sea life. It is just too disappointing to go diving and see the perfect photo, that when developed, is much less in quality than what you actually saw.