Getting great underwater photos with a point & shoot camera

I went out and bought an external stobe but not a very big one. It helped but only when I was really up close to my subject (since a flash will only work at distances less than a foot from the subject underwater. But what about getting cool photos of sharks and swimming fish? While on vacation, a divemaster gave me the answer. Most point and shoot cameras have a manual mode where you can make some adjustments. One of these adjustments is to the white balance.

White balance tells the camera what "white" is so it can then adjust how it sees surrounding colors. I set my camera's white balance to "CUSTOM" and bring a white slate with me on my dives. When I get to a depth that I want to photograph at, I point my camera so that the white slate fills the viewfinder and I set the white balance. I set my camera's flash to "OFF," and I am now ready to shoot all the beautiful and colorful corals and fish.

You do need to re-evaluate the white balance whenever you change depth since to compensate for the differing amount of light at different depths.

The results are amazing. The only hard part is getting that drum fish to stand still and smile!

If you then want to punch up your color a little, you can just bring your photo into PhotoShop and adjust the levels and presto you've got a great colorful underwater photo to impress your friends.

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You can also check out my underwater fine art and photography taken with the methods described in this lens. Underwater Fine Art and Photography