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review: ikelite underwater housing for Nikon D70 / D70s | ||
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BLOG . the underwater world is a worthy calling for photographers, and among the most challenging of the photographic venues.
light quickly losses it's color as it passes through water. reds are gone within 5 meters, greens make it a bit furtther and beyond 40 meters blues are all that is left, reaching down over a 1000 meters. the deeper the water, the dimmer the light, and paradoxically, the brighter the colors of life become. brightly colored animals that stand out in shallows are all but invisible on the deep walls. only a camera with it's artificial lights can capture life of the sea in all it's glory. |
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Ikelite underwater system for Nikon D70 / D70s
In this page I discuss the underwater camera system I put together for 2006. If you own a similar system, or are looking for information on digital SLR underwater camera systems or underwater photography in general, you've come to the right place. * the basic system * This is the third Ikelite system I've owned in 10 years of shooting underwater, It's also my first digital system for underwater use. My first time using this system was in Grand Cayman, and I was very happy with the results. Keep in mind the pics on this page have less than 5% of the original resolution since they have been downsized for the website. The ikelite system is extremely versatile and actually extends the capabilities of the camera with clever strobe controls. It's the volkswagen of camera housings, it works great, it's reliable, it does the job and it doesn't cost that much, relatively speaking. The truth is with any SLR housing and camera on the market today, you have no excuse for making a bad image! A Subal system, for instance, is the bmw of housings and will cost you double what this system cost, but will not take better pictures.! Below is my system. First is my basic setup with an 8" dome port. I use this dome port with the 12-24mm super wide zoom and the 18-70mm midrange zoom, with either one or two strobes. For macro and close ups I switch to the 105mm port setup. My system has the old style Ikelite control arms with quick release handles. The new ikelite control arms are a sleek and lighter, a nice feature because this keeps the system neutrally bouyant. The old arms are heavy and rock solid, and the housing sinks, but I'm saving some money and keeping them.
The rest of the page describes this system and how I use it. Keep in mind what you read here applies to any camera system. * getting started * Before you jump in the ocean and start breathing your precious air supply, apply your default settings to your camera, whatever they may be. Below is a check list of settings I like to take on before I dive in. Your goal underwater should be to establish good exposure and color balance quickly upon reaching you dive depth, everything else should be ready to go. Then spend your dive looking for cool things to photograph, making only minor adjustments on the fly and as you accend. The more time you spend looking at your camera and scratching your head, the more opportunities you will miss.
If these settings seam simple, contratulations, you know your stuff. Many of the Auto features are disabled, they work great on land most of the time, but will be fooled far to often underwater.
* exposure and compensation * Underwater, I use only two of the eleven exposure modes the camera offers, aperture priority (AP) and manual. This simplifies my life a bit and saves me time. AP is my favorite mode for most situations. For creative or difficult lighting situations I will switch to manual mode. If you are new with system and just want to shoot, switch to Auto mode and the camera will do everything for you. But you also give up creative control, and in many cases underwater, the Auto settings from the camera will be inappropriate, boring or just plain wrong. Auto will give you a decent image without thinking to much. Underwater you need to think about two light sources and adjust exposure for each independantly, natural light (the sun) and artificial light (your strobe). The balence between these two sources of light determines the 'mood' of your image. Auto images will always have the same mood. This system allows complete and independant control of exposure from both sources of light, thus the creative possibles are many. If the images are only slightly over or under exposed, using exposure compensation is your best remedy to the problem. Exposure compensation allows you to quickly adjust for exposure errors your camera makes. There are two compensation controls. The first controls natural or ambient light, it's the +/- button on camera. The second is for control of artificial, or strobe light. It's located on the housing back, easily accessable with your left thumb.
This is a great feature! The Ikelite iTTL housings go beyond the normal controls of the camera and provide two buttons and ten LEDs, which give complete control and 'status at a glance' of the strobe system. Strobe compensation is added or subtracted instantantly by pushing the up or down button respectively. The LED display instantly shows your current compensation setting. Push both buttons simultaniously and you enter manual mode, do it again and you're back in TTL mode. simple and fast. * compensation settings * I find over exposure to be the dominate exposure error when using strobes. It's easy to be fooled looking at the LCD, because brighter looks better on the tiny little LCD. It's much easier to pick up under exposured images looking at the LCD. I like to use the clipping indicator, which blinks the over exposed pixels in the LCD. To many blinking pixels and you've probably overexposed something. The histogram can be useful, but is mis-leading on the D70 since it only looks at Green pixels, and ignores Red and Blue pixels. So you only get 1/3 of the information you need. Don't hesitate to bracket photos of anything really interesting.! I like switching to manual mode for quick bracketing. The auto bracket feature on the camera is to difficult to use underwater, it's easier to jump to manual when bracketing natural light, or to bracket the strobe, use the up down buttons on the housing back. * strobes * In photography, light is everything, thus underwater, your strobe is everything. Without a good strobe or two, positioned far away from the camera lens, your options for making good images underwater are severly limited. A weak or poorly positioned strobe is worse than no strobe in many cases. Strobes have much, much shorter range underwater then they do on land. Rule of thumb, if your subject is more than 10 feet away, the strobe won't do anything. If you're taking a picture of a whale 30 feet away, turn off the strobe and use only ambient light. Remember my BLOG above. Your ideal subject range for any strobe system is within 5 or 6 feet, 2 meters. The position of the strobe is very important. For super wide angle shots, your strobes should be 20 to 30 inches, or more, away from the lens. For macro your strobe can be very close to lens, but only if you subject is very close to the lens. Get the idea. Light positioning is part of the Art of photography. In my opinion, only an SLR camera hardwired via a sync cord to an external strobe will give consistant results in many different situations. With a sync cord my D70 syncs at 1/500 shutter speeds, if I went wireless, my sync speed drops to 1/60, and that's just plain stupid.! Keep that in mind if someone is trying to sell you a wireless strobe, wireless is not a cool feature underwater. Using two strobes is twice as hard as using one. If you are learning, start with one strobe, not two. One of many reasons this is true is the camera doesn’t know it has an extra strobe firing. The exposure is typically determined solely from the primary strobe. With two strobes, start with your flash compensation at -1, and go from there. Most Point and Shoot systems use either wireless or internal (strobe inside the housing), the better ones will have a sync cord. Internal strobes are useless for making a photo, but often the internal strobe is used to sync to a wireless strobe. This eliminates the sync cord, making housing cheaper and easier to use. But these systems have many limitations, such as slow shutter sync, small effective apertures and a very limited strobe range, less than 2 feet in some cases. Some of these systems can be excellant for macro and close up work however. But the limitations make it very difficult to balence natural and strobe lighting, so pictures often look flat and washed out when the strobe is on. For wide angle, turning off the strobe and using a Red filter on the lens can give very nice results. Never use a Red filter with the strobe on, so make sure you can replace your Red filter underwater.
* macro * Above is the setup for the Nikon 105mm macro and the special macro port. The port provides manual focus which I find tedious and almost useless underwater. If the auto focus doesn’t work with the macro lens, forget about it. This is because the ambient light is probably to low for you see through the viewfinder to manually focus. That’s where the modeling lights save you, allowing the auto focus to keep on grinding. Another reason manual focus in macro work is difficult and risky is that out of focus macro shots are always trash, it’s extremely rare that either you or your subject is stationary underwater since you’re both floating. And with typical depth of fields in the inches, it’s a more luck than anything else if you get a shot in focus manually. * get in focus * I rely completely on autofocus underwater to get sharp images, even at night. On scuba you don't have the time to manually focus. Beyond that it is next to impossible to get sharp images consistantly with manual focus, you will drive yourselve insane trying. Learn to love auto focus. Among other things, SLR cameras have a HUGE advantage over point and shoots with autofocus.! Use modeling lights when ambient light is lacking. Learn to quickly move the focus zone if your subject isn’t in the center. Setting the focus zone to 'closest subject' is a good option if your subject is always in the forground, but will get you in trouble if you forget it's on. Dynamic focus tends to get confused underwater since everything is moving, so I don't use it. Modeling lights built into the strobe the best option and work great, which is yet another reason I love the Ikelite strobes. Be careful if you use a flashlite to model your subject, since the 'hot spot' will show up in your photo. If you use a flashlight, put a difusser over it to eliminate the hot spot. * pack it up and go *
- the end - ©2006 - david doyle - wavywaves.com - all rights reserved |
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