Photo Clinic, Part 10
| Introduction | Photo Basics | Equipment | In the Water | Flash |
| Composition | Sick Photos | Close-up Lens | Macro | Wide Angle |
Wide Angle:
Good pictures of big critters, including divers, are
best made with a wide angle lens. Pros may use a $2000 15-mm lens, but you can get a 20-mm
wide angle lens for around $500. The 20-mm will work fine for most divers. The wide angle
lens lets you get closer to the subject, yielding better colors and fewer particles in the
water.
I call the wide angle lens my "what's that speck?"
lens. Because the wide angle lens compresses the world into a small image, subjects that
look pretty big to you will shrink to a tiny spot in the middle of your picture. To use a
this lens, you have to get close to your subject. No, you have to get VERY close. Well,
that's not entirely accurate either. You have to get VERY VERY close. Otherwise, that
giant bat ray (which you shot from ten feet away) will look like a teeny tiny winged mouse
in the distance.
| What can a wide angle lens do for me? | |
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| Look at the photo above, then the one at right. Same lake, same depth,
same camera, same day. The picture above was taken with a 35 mm lens. It's bluish and
lacks contrast because the water between the lens and fish absorbs light. But you can't
get closer (due to the 2.75 foot minimum focusing distance of the 35 mm lens). Fish Lake perch. Bruce Argyle, August 1998 |
The photo above was taken with a 20 mm lens. Because you get
closer, the contrast is better and the colors are more vibrant. And because the 20 mm lens
has a greater depth of field, more of the picture will have crisp focus. Compare the
nearby moss strands in the picture at left, and in the picture above! Fish
Lake perch. Bruce Argyle, August 1998 |
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| Once again: Same lake, same day, same camera -- and same
diver. The picture above was taken with a 35 mm lens. Notice how the water soaks up both
the darkness of the black hood and the brightness of the facial skin. Diver
Dominic Bria at Fish Lake |
Now we take the same shot with a 20 mm lens. We get rid of
most of the water between the camera and subject. Now the blacks are black, the colors are
bright, and the details are crisp. Can better pictures really be this easy? Diver Dominic Bria at Fish Lake |
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A wide-angle lens is an important addition to your photo gear. This gets you into "magazine cover" photography: divers and fish; silhouette shots; reefscapes; big critters like sea lions and sharks. Shown here is the standard 35-mm lens for the Nikonos V at left, with a Sea & Sea 20-mm lens at right. |
| With the wide angle lens, you get REALLY close to
your subject. It appears that this diver descending through the kelp at San Clemente
Island is about 10 feet away. In reality, I can touch him. This closeness gets rid of the
milky water, allowing crisper contrasts and colors. Dominic
Bria descends at San Clemente Island |
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The wide-angle lens does produce some distortion of perspective, but it's less than you might think. Because there are few straight lines in the ocean, the "bulging building" effect you see in land wide-angle photography is not a problem.
| More important, the viewfinder on your camera is designed for the standard 35 mm lens supplied with the camera. With a wide angle lens, you need an add-on aiming device to compose your picture. At right is the Sea & Sea optical viewfinder. This magnifies the image for quick "snapping," and has frames for 35, 20, and 15 mm. |
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With the 20-mm lens, as shown here on the Nikonos, you never need to think about distortion effects. But with a 15-mm lens, warping of visual perspective can show up. For example, you may see a huge-headed diver with little bitty feet. With practice, you'll learn to produce a natural-looking perspective. One trick is to have your model swim slowly in a tight circle around you to reach the picture point. |
| One of the most useful features of the wide-angle
lens is its ability to get rid of the water between your lens and your subject. In
super-clear water, this means less red light is absorbed as it travels from strobe to
subject and back from subject to lens. In murky or particle-laden water, it means you can
get the whole picture without backing up until your subject is lost in the soup. Steven Argyle with bluegill at Quail Creek Reservoir |
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A wide-angle lens is great for those "show it to mom" diver
shots. Yes, it's expensive. But as you increase your collection of "keeper"
pictures, the wide-angle lens completes the "experience" the viewer has -- he
sees the environment of the kelp forest, as well as the fish, invertebrates, and
fascinating tiny details you shot with your other equipment. There's no other piece
equipment that captures the "feel" of diving more than a wide-angle lens. Gary Argyle descends at San Clemente |
Adopting the wide-angle lens may require you to change how you use the flash. Because you're so close, your strobe may blast a white spot right in the middle of the picture. You may need to make some adjustments in your aperature settings (see the discussion in the "Flash" section). When using my 20-mm lens with a YS50, I find it helpful to hold the strobe way back and to the side of me, so the light can spread out before it starts bouncing off divers and fish. Otherwise, my dive buddy gets "ghostitis" (see the section on scuba photo diseases).
The 20 mm lens for the Sea & Sea MMII can be attached over the standard lens underwater (shown at right with optical viewfinder). Often, as you start a dive, you don't know what's down there, or how close you'll get to it. The ability to swap lenses is a big plus for this camera. |
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The MX-10 by Sea & Sea also accepts a 20 mm conversion lens. The lens snaps into the standard lens, converting it from 32 to 20 mm. The lens comes with a non-optical quick-look viewfinder, as shown at right. |
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The conversion lenses for Sea & Sea cameras can be attached to your strobe. At left is the caddy for the MX-10 on the YS-40 strobe. At right is the caddy for the MMII (with a 20 mm and a 2T macro lens) attached to the YS-60 strobe. |
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External "conversion" lenses are handy. But if you're planning to shoot professionally, you should know that they don't provide the optical crispness of a dedicated wide-angle lens, such as that used by the Nikonos. (Instead of one lens, you have two lenses -- giving twice as many optical imperfections. And the water in the chamber between the main lens and the conversion lens isn't "optically pure.")
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Because the wide-angle lens concentrates light, you get more background
color at a smaller lens opening. You get better depth of field. You'll be surprised how
much better your colors are when comparing identical shots with 20-mm versus 35-mm lens.
The photo at left was shot using available light with a red filter (no flash!). Photo: Garibaldi. Nikonos V with 20-mm lens, red filter, |
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Click on the
garibaldi |
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About the author: Bruce Argyle works two jobs (emergency physician and as a computer programmer) so he can afford all the film he throws away when his scuba photos don't turn out. He dives in Utah and in California's Channel Islands because he's too cheap to go anywhere else.
