Under water with magnifying glass and camera

You don't have to become a champion in this field. As a "researcher" and "underwater photographer" you can discover a lot along the banks of lakes and rivers.

It is exciting to look at the world under water. Not only at great depth, but also near the shallow banks of lakes and rivers, where with some patience and luck you will be able to watch a Ram's Horn snail, a hunting spider or a water beetle searching for food.

But water is a mirror and what we believe we see in the reflection of the water can be misleading. In order to see the world under water without distortion, you need a so-called underwater magnifier. This may be a preserving tin, open on both ends, the bottom sealed with transparent plastic. It may also be, for example, a plastic plate with a glass window fixed on the bottom with adhesive. If you want to take your shots in this way, you can make excellent pictures through the underwater magnifier. In order to avoid mirror effects, keep the camera straight in front of the glass, but this is only an aid. It is much more fun to photograph during diving at two or three meters deep.

In specialist shops you can buy waterproof plastic covers suitable for all normal cameras. Inside the bag is a watertight glove for operating the shutter-release, setting the diaphragm and the exposure time and by which you can transport the film. During diving you keep one hand in the glove, the other hand you need for guiding. You need a color film 18-21 DIN, which is of average light sensitivity. Based on a normal situation with sunshine above and you 3m (10ft) under water, it is best to take an exposure time of V125 seconds at a diaphragm of/5.6 or/8.

We know that water has a density of three hundred times that of air. This is why light has a different effect under water. For example, when we meet a fish, he appears to be three times as close as the actual distance and one quarter larger. This is why a mirror is also imprinted on the film.

Water behaves like a filter. It is always more or less cloudy, and minute animal and vegetable plankton cause much light loss. In the Mediterranean at 40m (43yd) sight is quite good, but in the Baltic Sea at 10m (11yd) a clear image is already an exception and in a river you should be satisfied with 3m (10ft). Another filter action is created as follows: the white light of the sun consists of all the colors of the spectrum or rainbow, which are absorbed by the water but not all at the same speed. At a depth of 3m (10ft) there is no red left, at 6m (20ft) the orange vanishes, at 12m (40ft) there is no yellow left, after 18m (60ft) the green disappears, then the blue and deeper down everything turns into a grey-violet light. But we are now talking about depths which you will not reach with your snorkel. When diving with a snorkel, you should be able to take an exposure meter. There is also a special waterproof bag for that.

Owing to this loss of light, only photographs taken at close range (up to 3m or 10ft) are really successful. Without flash or artificial light you can only take color photographs a few meters underneath the water surface. In order to get interesting and contrasting results, you must photograph horizontally or even against the light.