The Underwater Photographer
July 29, 2010 by admin
Filed under Underwater Photography
The Underwater Photographer
This work explains the techniques for underwater photography. The author describes his “Think and Consider” approach to photography, provides information on the selection of equipment, and offers advice on how to photograph shipwrecks, divers and fish, and on taking photographs for competitions.
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(out of 35 reviews)
List Price: $ 39.95
Price: $ 41.50
Review by for The Underwater Photographer
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I have always said that underwater photography is not something a rational person should consider.It is expensive and at times very frustrating, but when you get some good results it rewards you with a great feeling of satisfaction.As someone who has persevered with underwater photography for nearly 15 years, I have bought many books on the subject in an attempt to learn why I keep making the same mistakes. Until reading Martin Edge’s book I felt that only Howard Hall’s book came close to showing me the answer.Martin has managed to produce a book that is not only interesting and easy to read but really gets the message over. He covers all the aspects you need to know about, without the commonly made mistake of getting tangled up in the technical & equipment issues.Sure he talks about the equipment, but the clear message is that you take the photograph…the equipment is just what you use to do it with.If you are serious about underwater photography, then you need this book!
Review by for The Underwater Photographer
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I know I’m in the minority when it comes to reviews of this book, but I really didn’t think this book was all that great. In fact, I thought it was about as close to useless as a book can get. The problem is that the book is light on technique and heavy on fluff. If you’re a beginning photographer, you probably need lots of technique help, and this book doesn’t deliver. It won’t help new photographers increase their skills because it really doesn’t offer much in the way of help on the critical areas like strobe positioning, exposure control, basic composition, etc. It’s not so hot for advanced photographers, either, because it doesn’t offer much guidance in areas that might be useful to them, like special techniques, advanced composition, subject selection, exotic equipment, etc.All in all, I’m not sure who the book was written to help…I’m just reasonably sure it won’t help many people.Pick another book.
Review by Mark S. Mendelsohn for The Underwater Photographer
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Martin Edge’s book should be considered a Bible for the underwater photographer, particularly for those diving with housed SLR’s. Jim Church’s books on the Nikonos system and on composition, are extremely helpful, but Martin Edge provides clear and to the point advice for the housed Nikon SLR user, as well as providing general instruction in uw photography. I’m a professional photographer on land, but a newbie to underwater photography, and I found this book appropriate for both levels of experience. If you plan to do uw photography, buy it. If you plan to use a housed SLR, buy it twice!
Review by Robert Zuch for The Underwater Photographer
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I bought the book after (and despite) the review of the Reader From Austin, TX; and I was not disappointed by this book. Martin covers all aspects of U/W photography in a concise way, giving just enough examples and explanations. It provides a lot of feedback on using common contemporary housed systems, which not many other presently available books do.I agree that it offers little in terms of complete basics; and it will not stretch the professionals. But hey, I’d like to think that I fit in the middle. And I do not want to waste another 20 rolls of expensive slide film before finding out where I went wrong. Martin’s book has warned me in advance about some of the pitfalls.The only possible criticism is that the book could have provided more than just a couple of examples for each described situation. However, this would make the book big and pricey. And as it is, you can even take this reasonably slim volume with you on the liveaboard.
Review by Gus Smedstad for The Underwater Photographer
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I’m a long time photographer, but I’ve only been on about 20 dives with a camera. I encountered quite a few problems on my first few dives, not with camera control, but with lighting. I learned some things the hard way, and others from various resources on the web, but I wanted a more thorough, systematic tutorial on how to improve my underwater photography. I purchased this book because I wanted something that focused on housed DSLRs, and because it was recommended on the Wetpixel forums.
The first half of the book was of no value to me. Mr. Edge uses a great deal of space to say very little. What little practical advice he gives, I’d seen elsewhere in just a few sentences:
* Get close to your subject, because water absorbs light.
* Shoot up.
* Don’t disturb the reef (which every diver should know anyway).
Some of what he said was even wrong. As you can read on any underwater photography site, and as I discovered first hand, you don’t want to use aperture priority or shutter priority, as he suggests. You want manual, because you want to underexpose according to available light. Even if your subject is fairly well lit, you want additional light from your strobes. Your available light is deficient in red, and your strobes can provide that.
Interestingly enough, despite what he says in the exposure chapter, he fairly consistently talks in terms of manual exposure in the rest of the book, as I would expect. One of Mr. Edge’s issues seems to be that while he has extensive experience, he conveys what he knows poorly, or perhaps does not even understand his own skills that well. The text is easy enough to read, but it’s often unfocused. He scatters basic flash exposure guidelines in half a dozen places, rather than in one coherent section.
Later in the book he has a decent section on exposing the background water the way you’d like, and letting the strobes take care of lighting your subject. It’s unfortunate that he doesn’t mention that until 160 pages after the chapter on exposure. Another fifty pages beyond that, he covers common aperture / distance / flash relationships, which also should have been covered much, much earlier.
The book starts to get valuable about halfway through, when it turns to composition. It’s not what I would call very systematic, beyond well-known aphorisms such as the rule of thirds. However, simply reading Mr. Edge’s descriptions of how he approached a particular shot, both in technique and preparation, often yielded valuable insights for me. It’s largely a matter of mining the text for these nuggets of information.
After composition, he returns once again to technique, and this section is more valuable than the earlier technique sections in the first half of the book. He has a good deal to say about strobe positioning, for example, that I really wanted to know. Including some practical advice on not spooking fish that I hadn’t considered.
I do wish he’d spent more a few pages on night photography, and said more in those pages. He doesn’t even mention how vital a focusing light can be on a night dive, or even when shooting subjects in crevices or under overhangs. He shows a pair of lights mounted on his housing, but doesn’t say why they are there.
Overall, I’d say that I’d learned a fair amount by the time I had finished reading, and I will no doubt re-read some sections. But I can’t help but wonder how much better the book might be if Mr. Edge had a better grasp on the theory behind his skills, and was better at conveying what he knew in a coherent fashion.
– Gus