Underwater photography is rewarding since the ocean offers numerous colorful animals, interesting coral patterns and wonderful landscapes that can be photographed. Wide angle underwater photography includes capturing a wide field of view with the help of the wide-angle setting of your camera. Wide angle photography involves zooming out and is a photographer’s delight, when capturing the expanse of the ocean.
Wide angle photography generally involves shooting water itself and provides great opportunities to the photographers to capture ocean in all its beauty.
It can be challenging and tricky at the beginning but turn rewarding with practice. The angle of view is decided by the focal length of the lens and smaller values of focal length provide wider views. For example, a zoom lens with focal length values between 35mm and 85mm will shoot widest at 35mm.
Wide angle photography highlights the foreground and captures wider images. This may however involve shrinking of the elements of the image and can be rectified by capturing the subject from close. Water has many elements that cloud the subject and diminish details. This can be avoided by getting close and capturing the subject in full brilliance.
The technique can include imaging many things like coral reefs, kelp forests, large animals, diver portraits, whales, shipwrecks or schools of large fishes. Since it is tricky, underwater wide angle photography is practiced by a limited number of photographers. However, it produces effective and most remarkable images. The advantage of using wide-angle is that it allows getting close to the subject that reduces the amount of water in between and produces clearer images. Also, getting close to the subject lets the artificial lighting reach the subject easily and produce brighter images.
Some of the points that should be kept in mind while experimenting with wide-angle photography include the following.
- To eliminate haze caused by water, it is necessary to get close to the subject.
- Accurate ambient light exposure gives a natural look to the images captured and is crucial while shooting large objects.
- Strobes are an indispensable part of underwater photography and are used as fill-flash for the restoration of color and contrast. Learning effective use of strobes is crucial for wide-angle photography.
- Wide-angle photography demands balancing of foreground and background exposure with the aid of artificial and natural light. The expertise needed should be practiced well.
- The photography technique offers larger image of view, greater depth of field in focus and shorter focal length.