Download - Emirates Diving Association
Download - Emirates Diving Association
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UW PHOTOGRAPHY<br />
As Wide as it Gets<br />
feature and photography Simone Caprodossi<br />
Here is a little photography feature to introduce<br />
a new lens that I believe creates great new<br />
underwater photography possibilities and gives<br />
us an excuse to have a few more shots from<br />
our amazing Sudan trip as the article featured<br />
on pages 42-57 was packed to the max.<br />
My new favourite underwater toy is the Canon<br />
ES 8-15 fisheye zoom. I use it on a full frame<br />
Canon 5D Mark 3 in a Subal underwater<br />
housing with 2 Inon YS 240 strobes. It can be<br />
used with the same dome port that is used<br />
for the regular wideangle lenses such as the<br />
16-35. On a cropped sensor SLR (anything<br />
different from Canon other than the 5D, 6D<br />
or 1D) it will lose some of the width and the<br />
full circular effect, but will still be as wide as it<br />
gets for your system.<br />
Within the pages to follow, you will find examples of some images I like<br />
most that exemplify subjects I believe this lens works really well for.<br />
A first great subject is a beautiful reef with plenty of fish, ideally<br />
at dusk or dawn as the 8mm with clear visibility allows you to<br />
capture all the way from the surface light, down to 25-30<br />
meters depth. It is great to have a diver in the shot to get a<br />
sense of proportion and the grandeur of the reef.<br />
Shaab Rumi Reef: 8mm, F/11, 1/100, ISO 400,<br />
2 strobes full power.<br />
It is not an everyday lens, but with the right<br />
subjects I really think it enables amazing new<br />
photo opportunities that neither the 16-35<br />
or a 14mm or 15mm fix fisheye lens can. The<br />
beauty of having it as a zoom lens is that it<br />
allows you to play with the full circular fisheye<br />
at the 8mm end and get the circular image<br />
when the subject is right for it, but then you<br />
can swing it back to 15 and basically have a<br />
really wide wide-angle for more normal<br />
looking seascapes or fish portraits that will<br />
work for most of the dive. Unfortunately at the<br />
moment, only Canon offers a fisheye zoom,<br />
so to get the circular effect on other camera<br />
systems, you would need to use the fixed 8mm<br />
fisheye which means you will be stuck with the<br />
effect for the duration of your dive.<br />
It took me several trials and errors to get it to<br />
work correctly, so here are 5 tips not to repeat<br />
if you have started using it or will start using it:<br />
1. Remove the sun shade from the dome<br />
port or else at 8mm, you‘ll get a weird<br />
black shape instead of your nice circle.<br />
2. Be very careful with strobe positioning. You<br />
need to stretch them well out of the field<br />
of view of the lens or you’ll get light bursts<br />
in your photo, if not the strobes themselves.<br />
3. Don’t go too far with pointing strobes<br />
away to avoid issues made in point 2<br />
above, because then you risk having heavily<br />
shaded areas where the back of the dome<br />
port shades the photo from the strobe<br />
lights.<br />
4. Mind yourself, as you can easily get your<br />
fins and legs in as part of the bottom of<br />
the shot.<br />
5. To readdress 2, 3 and 4, keep checking your<br />
shots after taking them until you know the<br />
setup is right as that’s really the only way to<br />
be sure you have got it, especially at first.<br />
Trust me, I have trashed several sets of<br />
images due to skipping these points.<br />
32 DIVERS FOR THE ENVIRONMENT, SEPTEMBER 2013<br />
SEPTEMBER 2013, DIVERS FOR THE ENVIRONMENT<br />
33