This trip to Palau marked my foray into the world of underwater photography. Some time ago I purchased an Ikelite housing and Substrobe 200 for my Nikon Coolpix 990, but after a trial run in a swimming pool I realized that there was a flaw with the first rev of the housing. TTL wasn't working properly because the port on the front of the housing was too small and covered crucial sensors on the body of the Coolpix. Ikelite was good about getting the camera modified and back to me within a couple of weeks, and the camera seemed to work fine after that.

My underwater photography setup included:

- Nikon Coolpix 990 Digital Camera
- Ikelite Underwater Housing for Coolpix 990 (~$800)
- Substrobe 200 (~$900)
- Nikon WC-E24 Wide-Angle Adapter for Coolpix 950/990
- Lexar 10X 256MB Compact Flash Card
- Minds@Work Digital Wallet (backup device)

Unfortunately, taking the housing down to pressures greater than that which would be sustained in a swimming pool introduced its own set of problems. The additional pressure caused the buttons on the back of the camera to be depressed on their own, which (of course) made it impossible to control certain integral features (like changing the aperture) while underwater. My hi-tech solution was to fold up pieces of a notecard and wedge them between the back of the camera and the plastic knobs on the camera plate. This had the effect of pushing the camera away from the back of the housing by a millimeter or two, which was enough for me to regain use of the camera down to a depth of around 90'. When decending lower than that, I made sure to set the aperture to something reasonable while shallow -- the other features worked, but were a bit inconsistent (if you pressed one of the buttons on the back of the camera, other options would often change along with the one controlled by the button itself). NOTE: This problem has since been fixed by Ikelite.

Another (very frustrating) problem was that TTL flash exposure seemed to perform differently underwater than on land. My land exposures came out perfectly, but underwater, all exposures closer than about two or three feet came out greatly overexposed. Further than that, the flash was sometimes not powerful enough to properly illuminate the subject. Setting the aperture of the camera to its smallest setting (f11.1 at full zoom) helped a bit, but didn't solve the problem. Large aperture exposures were almost impossible to expose properly.

Solving the problem involved learning how to expose manually by setting the aperture and strobe power. I found that setting the aperture of the camera to f7.0-f11.1 (smallest apertures for wide angle to maximum zoom) and the strobe to 1/8 or 1/4 power typically produced acceptable exposures for macro photography. Of course, it's impossible to detail the exact procedure here -- one just has to get in the water to see what happens. There's a useful information dial on the back of the Ikelite Substrobe 200 that lets you look up distance, strobe power, aperture settings, and ISO for a given shot.

I also tried setting the external strobe power to -1 E.V. on the Coolpix itself. I had to shoot in manual mode, with the internal flash turned off. Shooting this way produced reasonable exposures with TTL metering, and most of the photos I took underwater with flash were exposed in this manner.

So, here's a simple way to get reasonable shots with the above setup:

1. Put camera in manual mode.
2. Using the menu, turn internal flash off, external flash on.
3. Using the menu, change the external strobe exposure to -1 E.V.
4. Always shoot with the smallest aperture possible (f7.0-f11.1) when shooting with flash. The dial on the back of the camera in the upper right-hand corner changes aperture when the flash is enabled.
5. If diving deep, change the camera's aperture while shallow, with flash set to 'on' in the camera. It will not affect aperture when flash is turned off, but will 'stick', so when you return to flash mode, the camera remembers what aperture you set.
6. Remember to use macro mode for close-up shots.
7. Try setting the camera to use center-weighted metering. My shots were generally less overexposed when using this mode rather than matrix metering.

Additional tips:

1. Use the strobe falloff to light your subject more (center the strobe output) or less (move the center of the strobe's output away from the subject).
2. Position the strobe above the subject (pointing down at it) to minimize backscatter.
3. Clip the camera to yourself, because it's not positive underwater and you don't want to lost it. :)
4. Change the camera batteries after every dive. The strobe is usually fine for two dives, with the light on all the time. If you don't use rechargeable batteries, this may be painful on your wallet.
5. The Nikon 880 doesn't have a manual dial for controlling aperture. Don't try to use this camera underwater, as you'll likely be disappointed if you cannot easily control aperture!
6. Don't take your camera inside for long periods of time if your accomodations have air conditioning, and you're diving in tropical climate. Otherwise, your camera will fog up horribly (it will be wet) the next time you take it outside into the humid heat. If you must take it inside, put it in a zip-lock bag and squeeze all the air out of it before taking it back outside. Let it warm up in the bag.

Even though I really enjoy photos that came out of this trip, I had two big problems with using the Coolpix 990 underwater. The first was that photos weren't as sharp as the ones I'm used to getting out of the D30. I guess this was to be expected -- the optics aren't as good, and I rarely was able to shoot faster than 1/60 sec. The second problem was that it was hard to focus on dimly lit subjects during night dives. In order for focus to lock, one has to illuminate the subject with the strobe's modeling light and frame the shot such that it's in the middle of the viewfinder. This is not a problem if you're taking photos of something stationary, like coral, but shooting little things that are moving can be difficult. Manual focus macro setups use framing brackets. You just stick your subject in the goal post-like bracket and shoot! I have a really blurry photo of a swimming nudibranch (taken while doing somersaults around it). Francis just positioned his camera such that the nudibranch was in the framing bracket, and snapped his photo. :)

All land photos were taken with a Canon D30 Digital SLR, 24/2.8 and 50/1.8 lenses, and a Coolpix 880 (Kenny's camera). I've also posted exposure information for the photos on this site. To find exposure details for a given image, click on it load the full-size version, then find the name of the image by right clicking on it and selecting "Properties". Convert all instances of "%20" to a space, and look it up in the exposure information file.

Update: I received a reply from Ikelite after asking them about the overexposure problem. It seems to match what I had to discover on my own:

Due to the sensitivity of the digitals, they all seem to overexpose somewhat, especially for close-ups. Here are some shooting tips that might help:

1) Set the metering to either "center-weighted" or "spot"
2) Set the aperture in the 5.0-7.2 range
3) Set exposure compensation to about -1.3 EV

If all the electronics are functioning properly, this should help.

11/11/2001 - Update: Ike wrote me from Ikelite, concerned that my housing was defective. I sent it back in to have it fixed, and it is now working wonderfully without automatic button pushing at depth. I've learned a lot since writing on this page, and apologize if some of it is dated! My new tips for getting good results underwater:

1. Shoot on manual mode.
2. Point your camera into the blue and set your shutter/aperture to underexpose 1-2 stops to get nice blues from the water. Your camera will overexpose if you try to meter automatically underwater.
3. Shoot with the strobe on manual, and use a diffuser.
4. If you have a Substrobe 200 and are shooting macro, you might be able to get away with shooting at small apertures and high shutter speeds (although the water in the background will be black). TTL worked wonderfully for me while shooting macro at 1/500-1/1000 sec, f11.1, iso 100.

[next - scenery]

me, with the coolpix and housing	ikelite housing and strobe	exposure tests on kenny
nikonos v setup (not mine)	sea&sea setup (not mine)	video housing (not mine)