From the course: Learning Underwater Photography

Pre-dive checks - Photoshop Tutorial

From the course: Learning Underwater Photography

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Pre-dive checks

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- [Instructor] So we've got our camera setting all dialed in. Now it's time to make sure that our setup is ready to go. So, in this movie we're going to talk about some pre-dive checks. So, making sure that our system is ready to go is going to take a couple different steps. The first one is checking the camera. So, the first thing we want to check is that we've got a full battery. Now, camera batteries nowadays last quite a long time, but the situation you don't want to be in is near the end of the dive, your battery's just died, and the whale shark swims by and everybody else gets the picture, but not you. When in doubt, just change the battery for a fresh one before every dive. Make sure you've got a memory card in the camera and that it's formatted. Some cameras will let you take a photo even if there's no memory card in there. It's just not being stored. Now, this is just a quick note, but I never format my memory card in the computer. The computer doesn't know how my memory card likes to be formatted, but the camera does so always make sure when you're reformatting your memory card to do that in camera. So if your lens is equipped with it, you want to check the focus and range switches. Some lenses will let you determine whether you want to use the entire focal range or only a short distance of it and that's usually changed by a little switch on the lens that, when it's in the housing, you can't get to anymore so make sure if your lens is equipped with a range limiting switch, you've got it in the correct position. Some lenses allow you to switch between manual and auto focus on the lens so go ahead and take a look and make sure that that switch is in the right place. And lastly, we've all done it. Make sure to take the lens cap off. So now that we've got our camera set, the next thing we want to look at is our strobes and specifically if we're shooting TTL. So, as you may recall from our previous discussion of TTL, with TTL Strobe Metering, the camera's controlling the output of the strobe so we want to make sure that this is happening before we go for the dive and the nice thing is we can actually check it quite simply on the surface so we've got our camera on land. We're in a controlled environment such as a camera room. So we're going to find a simple subject, something like a towel. We're going to put it in front of the camera and we're going to take a series of photos of it. Now, the exposure of that towel, because it is our foreground subject, is primarily going to be controlled by the strobes, so as we adjust our aperture, remember, letting in more light or letting in less light, the strobes should compensate for that if the TTL is functioning appropriately so the way we test it is set your strobes on TTL and take that series of photos of the towel, adjusting the aperture. If the exposure of that towel stays consistent throughout the range of images, your TTL is working. The other thing we want to make sure is we have access to your camera's Flash EV+/- button. This is what allows us to adjust the TTL strobe power in camera. If you don't feel that the TTL signal that the camera gave is quite right, you can tell it to up the power or lower the power for both strobes at the same time. And lastly, if you're not using a fiber optic system, if you're relying on an electronic system, you want to make sure that you are checking your X-Sync speed and that you know what the maximum shutter speed you can use is. For those of us using fiber optic as opposed to electronic strobe triggering, this is not so much of a problem because your internal flash will automatically limit the shutter speed to the X-Sync speed. So, we're about ready to get in the water. There's just a couple more things we've got to check. So, I cannot stress that this is one of the most important things to do before every dive. First thing we want to do is take a test shot. So, I'm not talking about in the water. I'm talking before we even carry the camera out to the boat. So, we've just got it sitting on a table all set up, all turned, all dialed in. Want you to take a test shot. Then what I want you to do is adjust the aperture, adjust the shutter speed, and adjust the strobe controls and make sure that you're getting the desired result so make sure when you turn that aperture dial the aperture's actually changing. Make sure when you change the shutter speed dial the shutter speed is actually changing and make sure as you adjust those strobes that they are actually changing. Something that might not be readily obvious until you look at the photo afterwards, but check to make sure that your auto and/or manual focus are working. There's nothing worse than coming back from a dive and every single photo is out of focus because you've accidentally had the camera in manual focus. If you're using a zoom lens, such as the 16 to 35 wide angle zoom, make sure that your zoom control is working. Again, as we mentioned previously in the equipment section, this requires a special gear to be mounted on the lens that will allow us to zoom using a knob on the housing. If this isn't properly aligned, it's possible that your zoom may not work underwater so just go ahead, turn that knob, look through the viewfinder, and make sure the camera is actually zooming in and out. And last but not least, take another test shot after you've done all that just to be sure and take a look at the result and make sure that it's what you expect. So in this movie we covered how to make sure that your camera system is really ready to go diving.

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