Underwater Photo Courses

New to Underwater Photography?

Then lets run through some basics with you, our half-day course starts with around two hours of practical hands-on instruction, with your camera on dry land. You'll learn how to achieve better control over exposure, focus and composition. Plus ways to reduce the shutter-lag on your camera. Shutter Lag is the time between pressing the shutter release and the actual photo being taken by digital camera's. It is one of the most complained-about aspects of underwater digital photography using compact camera's.

After the 'dry' instruction, we'll jump into our dip pool for an hour or so and use your own camera in its housing to demonstrate exposure variations, focusing and strobe settings required to achieve sharp, well exposed images. We will record these and provide you with an easy method of recalling these settings when you are diving.

Next we will run you through a set of basic care and maintenance procedures to maximise the life of your camera and housing and answer any questions you may have regarding the use of your camera. After this four hours of instruction, you will be able to take your camera and housing underwater with a much better knowledge of how your camera operates and return home with a bundle of underwater photos to show your friends and family.

Our full-day course takes your photography instruction one step further. After the morning half-day session, we dive together and search-out underwater subjects together. Then apply the theory learnt in the morning to capture images of the fantastic marine life and underwater scenery around Tulamben. You will be able to review the techniques learnt above water and apply them to actual underwater subjects. Jeff will dive one-on-one with you and after the dive, will spend time reviewing images to fine-tune the techniques learnt and guide you with details of  what went wrong with any shots that weren't so fantastic.

View our Course Outlines

Been taking Underwater Photos for a while?

Then Jeff can help you better understand your camera and take control of exposure, sharpness, composition and strobe powers. Perhaps your camera has the ability to take RAW images, but you don't fully understand the advantages? Have you recently purchased an external strobe or supplementary lenses and would like to take full advantage of their capabilities?

We offer a half-day to one day course with a flexible outline tailored to suit your needs. This can be a half day of above-water instruction with your own equipment, or it can be a combination of half day of above-water instruction followed by an escorted dive to be helped along with difficulties you may be experiencing with technique or equipment use.

Just let us know what you would like to learn and we will suggest a course structure to suit your needs and give you maximum improvement potential.

Like to learn about editing with Adobe Photoshop?

Today's digital cameras are capable of taking fantastic images. But even the best of digital photo's, that have been well exposed, in focus and composed well; can be improved by around 20% by the correct use of Adobe Photoshop. 

This computer program is used to adjust each individual pixel that the camera has recorded. There are many adjustments and editing features available with the program. Many of them are largely misunderstood, particularly for underwater photography. It is the Photo Industry standard in editing programs and to the uninitiated can be a little daunting to use.

Our Underwater Adobe Photoshop course is a half day in duration and we recommend that this course is sat after you have taken some of your own digital underwater photos. We can then run you through the editing features of Photoshop, one by one on your own images and see the improved results first hand. As part of this course, we provide you with a CD of screen shots that help guide you through the adjustment process's learnt in the course, and also includes a Adobe Photoshop Beginners Guide book in PDF format, plus your images are also burnt to the CD before and after adjustment to remind you of the progressive changes made on your images.

If your camera has RAW image capability, this can be an additional part of the course, but will add around two hours to the course or can be sat-separately. The CD provided to you will also include Adobe Camera RAW adjustment screen shots to guide you through the RAW workflow that you learn in this course.
 

Adobe Camera Raw Screenshot

Do you have a Leak Warning Device in your camera housing?

Jeff has recently designed and is now producing a Leak Detector for Underwater Camera & Video Housings. It senses any moisture (or water) inside the housing and alerts the photographer with a flashing Hi-Intensity LED (Light Emitting Diode) next to the camera's LCD screen. The unit is easily fitted by the end-user and can be shipped Worldwide.

Check out the Leak Detector website for details:
uwleakdetector.com