The 10 Worst Pieces of Advice for Underwater Photographers

Over the years, I’ve received the generous, unsolicited musings of many folks with opinions. Opinions on photography, on underwater photography, on gear…you name it. Often, such pieces of advice come from a place of good intentions – but they’re often terrible.

One in particular that I’ll never forget came as I considered my first “real” camera setup, about 10 years ago. A school teacher of mine told me, “You’d be better off investing that camera money into an index fund!”

An index fund established ten years ago with the cost of a pro camera would certainly have performed well; but I’ll settle for a decade of professional experience, thousands of licensed images, and a fulfilling career 🙂

The point is, don’t listen to bad advice! Or, make sure you at least have considered different perspectives.

With this in mind, here are some of our favorite pieces of bad advice we’ve heard in underwater photography. What are we missing? Let us know!

1. You should be shooting in manual mode. 

In a lot of cases, yes, we benefit from the “M” mode. But, there are times to consider using those “amateur” camera modes! Plenty of working professionals routinely switch between non-manual modes – especially aperture priority and shutter priority.

In underwater photography, we are most likely to benefit from modes other than M when in shallow water with plenty of available light. For example, shooting megafauna like whale sharks or sea turtles in shallow water does not necessarily benefit from the M mode. This is especially true if strobes are not being used, and in such environments, strobes are often not particularly useful.

In these cases, I like to use aperture priority mode. Try keeping your camera in aperture priority, with your ISO and aperture set at where you want them. In this case, the camera will adjust your shutter speed for you, leaving you with the creative controls of your variable aperture. If you notice your shutter speed is slower than you’re comfortable with, raise your ISO, or open your aperture (if possible).

In other situations, you may have no flexibility with your shutter speed, and want to set it in stone. In this case shutter priority may be more useful than manual – set your shutter where it needs to be, and let the camera work around it.

2. You need a full frame camera to be a serious underwater photographer. 

This is an absolute classic, in all types of photography.

We’ve written a few articles on this already, but, in short, this is not good advice. You don’t need a full frame camera to be serious. In fact, I’d contend that many less-knowledgeable photographers jump into full frame gear just because of this bad advice, without fully understanding the nuances of different systems and sensor sizes.

Full frame cameras are often marketed at photographers who can pay top prices, and this extra expense undoubtedly is built into the stigma of other (often less expensive) sensors. And, full frame certainly have advantages – they allow for some creative control that smaller sensors cannot match. But, smaller sensors have their own advantages, and professional photographers working in certain niches of photography understand this.

Check out this article on some of the functional differences, here. 

3. You need a massive dome port to take good split shots. 

This is another topic we’ve written on in the last year. This is advice I hear all the time – especially when people are trying to choose dome ports. Get the biggest dome you can if you want to take split shots (over-unders)!

But, in reality, you can make great images with many different sizes of dome port. Most of the images in this article were made with a fairly small dome port, on a micro 4/3 sensor.

The key to getting nice clean images with wave lines is understanding how the ocean is rising and falling around you, and moving yourself and your camera in ways that don’t fight against this movement. Check out the above link for more!

4. The only money in photography is in shooting weddings. 

Another common piece of “advice”, often from unsuccessful / unhappy photographers…

Sure, weddings are a major component of the overall photography industry. Plenty of photographers make good livings exclusively shooting weddings. It makes some sense – capturing one of the most important days of your life is something you’ll probably be willing to pay for. But there are so many other stories to tell!

As a marine biologist, I’ve found a niche telling stories of ocean conservation, threats, and optimism with my camera; and countless others have also caved out their own niches.

You can absolutely earn income from this, if that’s what you’re looking to do. It takes careful planning, practice, and some luck, but so do most things in life.

5. Always shoot with the sun at your back! 

A common piece of advice from photographers who’ve done most of their work on land, us underwater photographers appreciate the fallacy in this statement!

Above water, keeping the sun at your back is generally a good starting place for well-exposed images.

But, underwater, shooting into the sun usually gives your images more intrigue and some context, without the shadow and highlight issues you may run into above water. This is particularly true if you’re using strobes, with which you can properly expose your foreground and create a nice sunball in the background.

My absolute favorite time to shoot underwater is late in the afternoon, shooting at the sun, when you can capture angled rays of sunlight cutting through the water – these moments can produce pure magic underwater.

6. One battery and one memory card is enough. 

We spend a lot of money on underwater gear. Ports, arms, strobes, housings, diopters, you name it. So why skimp on the two things that are sure to end your session??

Buy the bigger-size memory card, a spare, and at least one spare battery. You’ll thank me later!

These days, memory cards are getting ridiculously advanced – I now keep a 2terabyte CFExpress card in my camera, with a 512gb backup SD card as well. And, I’ve still managed to run out of storage on a dive! Offload your footage, format your cards, check your cards before every dive.

As for batteries, I keep at least one full set charged on the boat during my dive, and swap as necessary. I’ve found that one dive + a surface interval is usually long enough to get a dive’s worth of charge out of re-charging batteries, so I don’t stress too much about having more than one set of charged backups.

But, if you’re diving on a boat without power outlets, and need multiple dives, this might be something to consider!

7. You can always fix it in post. 

Well, you can fix a lot in post. And, if you’re shooting still images in RAW, there is a TON you can save in post.

But some things are just not fixable, especially in the world of video.

A lot of underwater photographers transitioning to underwater video have developed the habit of shooting to edit (i.e. intentionally under- or over- exposing in order to process in a certain way, etc). In principal, shooting to edit is always a good strategy. But when we get into the editing workflow for video, a lot of the workflow we learned shooting RAW photos goes out the window.

All of a sudden, I can’t save my white balance with one click??

Indeed, properly exposing underwater video, after learning underwater photography, can be a bit of an adjustment. We have many articles on this on the blog, like this one; check them out for more!

8. You should always use your strobes/lights. 

I have to admit that I followed this advice for the first few years after putting together my first underwater camera rig.

I mean, you spent all the money on underwater lights, cables, arms…why wouldn’t you use them!

Well, as in the “you should always shoot in manual” section, there’s a time and a place for everything. And, some times and in some places, strobes are more likely to hurt us than help us. One situation is in shallow water with heavy particulate – the ambient light is probably enough to light your scene, and the reflection of your light on the particulate will just serve to muddle your image with backscatter.

There are also more and more situations I find myself in these days filming video, in relatively shallow water, where I have to resist the urge to use my video light and instead shoot with natural light. You can convey different feelings without any artificial light in the image, which is something you may want to explore.

In general, when someone tries to tell you, “you should ALWAYS xyz”, odds are this is going to be suspect advice.

9. Make sure you get a TTL-capable rig – you’ll want it later. 

Another one of the most common conversations I have with Mozaik customers is whether or not to purchase TTL-capable strobes. In some housing systems, this requires different cables or add ons, like hotshot TTL-converters.

For some very specific uses, TTL is great. Blackwater diving, for example, can greatly benefit from TTL exposure tools. Alex Tyrrell has a terrific article on some good times to use TTL, here. 

But, for most people in everyday situations, TTL is neither necessary not advantageous.

I think many folks are scared off initially by “manual strobe use”. But, it’s super quick to pick up! And, you’ll get better and more reliable control of your strobes, as well as a bit better of an understanding of the process.

For this reason, I usually tell customers to go for manual, and not worry about TTL functionality.

10. Fisheye lenses create weirdly distorted images. 

People are so afraid of fisheye lenses. I don’t get it! I find myself trying to convince someone like once a week that, “actually, you’ll probably never realize there’s any fisheye effect at all when you review your underwater images shot on one…”

I think the term “fisheye” conjures up a mental picture of a warped, funhouse mirror with a clowns face staring out – but this isn’t true! In fact, fisheye lenses are my favorite type of wide angle lens for underwater work.

And, I’d wager (without any data) that most professional wide angle images you’ve seen from underwater habitats were shot on a fisheye lens.

The secret to fisheyes underwater is two-part: one, there are few straight lines that human brains interpret underwater, like we might above water. This means that any curvature from fisheye lenses goes mostly unnoticed. Two, fisheyes often focus very close and are extremely wide angle. Underwater, being close is everything. Minimizing the amount of water and potential backscatter between you and the subject by using a very wide, close-focusing lens is a powerful tool in creating better images.

Don’t fear the fisheye!

Well, that’s what we have this week! Please drop your favorite pieces of bad advice you’ve been given in the comments or in an email to Morgan@housingcamera.com!

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Morgan Bennett-Smith

Morgan Bennett-Smith is a field research scientist and photographer. He completed his B.A. in marine science at Occidental College in Southern California, and his Master’s Degree in marine science at the Red Sea Research Center in Thuwal, Saudi Arabia, where he studied coral reef symbiosis. Along the way, his photographs have won numerous international competitions and been featured by organizations such as Smithsonian, the Guardian, and Nature, and been commercially licensed over 3,000 times.

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