Get Wet Images

I've been in many situations where a grey card wouldn't work. I've shot Jiu Jitsu tournaments where the lights would have either a green or magenta hue depending on when you caught it at the flicker. The only way to get the color right was to calibrate. The other was at a summer camp cafeteria where the entire inside was stained wood with flourascent lights. Between the brown of the wood and the green of the lights, it was impossible to get color and skin tones to show up properly. Sometimes a grey card isn't enough so I plan to test the calibration hopefully within the next couple days for shallow water. When ever I do I'll post the results and let you know. Who knows it may not be beneficial at all. I realize the calibration will be depth and watercolor dependent so I plan on getting multiple profiles to use. Definitely more work but if I can get it to work as well as it has for me on land, it will be well worth it for me since I pay attention to the minor details that only mike a tiny difference.

If an image is used commercially then it should have a release from the photographer just like you need a release from a model. A company that sells professional level photographic equipment should know this and there's no excuse for doing it. They should work a deal with the photographers who's photos they used and give them a discount on future equipment or turn it into a competition where prizes are given to winners where they know the photos will be used commercially using a specific hashtag. NatGeo YourShot is a perfect example of this where people know they are submitting photos that may be used commercially and have no issues with this. I've had someone want me to do professional photography for a weeklong retreat and told me that it wasn't paid but would give me publicity when there wasn't any one who would notice anyway. Nauticam should know better and their response of once you hashtag it's open season is bull. I know someone who was hired to shoot some photos for a high end clothing catalog for a single year. the next year he saw one of his images on the cover. Since he only gave permission for the last year he took them to court and they had to pay again for the image they used. Bottom line is that if a photo is going to be used for profit they need a release and if they use one of my images without permission I'm going to have my lawyer contact them for payment rather than just ask to take it down. At least it seems like they took everything down now and hopefully leaned their lesson and ask for permission from now on.

Have you tried using color calibration. A couple years ago I sealed my color Checker Passport in a vacuum bag and took tried to calibrate underwater. At that time I only had a TG4 for underwater and It didn't work how I was hoping. It tended to bring up the yellow more than I'd like. Now that I have a housing for my D810 I'm going to put the Color Checker in an iPhone case and see what it does on the DSLR. Normally when on land when I use it, The blues are the most affected and come out much richer and deeper with some improvements in the reds as well. I was going to test it this morning on a manatee trip but wasn't able to make it out. I'll probably be able to get some test shots to compare tomorrow. Depending on if it works well, I wonder if using the lens and light filters along with calibration would make it pop even more. Have you ever calibrated for underwater?

I saw you posted a video, Was any of it using this setup?

For floats, I just took some PVC with end caps glued on and they work great. I image of someone recently that had water bottles taped to the arms which would be even better because you could put water in them if needed to adjust the perfect buoyancy.

I've been looking at doing this for a couple years now and haven't been able to get a good test session in to see how well it works. I'm excited to see someone actually doing it and having it come out well, nice job. I tried testing in green water using a TG4 with magenta filter and some green produce bags over the strobe. This set up wasn't good enough to get a real idea of how well it would work. I've got a D810 with Nauticam housing but I only have a port setup for my Sigma 15mm fisheye that won't take a filter. As soon as I get the Nikon 16-35 I'm going to test it out. The main purpose I was looking at was to have the ambient light of the background blend in better with the artificial light. Most of the time what ever is in the added light will look good but the background would be blue or green with all other colors washed out. I thought of it a while back when watching video that had beautiful backgrounds that should be filled with color but were strictly blue/green. I'm really excited with these images and the potential for future endeavors.