5 Tips to improve your underwater videography skills!

You probably already know a bit about how the depth of field affects your image but in a nutshell the wider (lower f-number) the shallower or narrower your depth of field, and the smaller the aperture (bigger f-number) the greater your depth of field will be.

This means that to capture a wider scene where you want to have all, or most, of your frame in focus it is wise to choose a larger F-stop number like f8 and above. On the other hand, if you intend to create a blurry background, referred to as bokeh in photography terms, then a small F-stop is required, for example, f5.6 or below.

For wide-angle shots where we want to show all the frames in focus is best to choose an F-stop at least 8 or above. For portrait and more cinematic shots a lower F-stop of 5.6 or below will give a more dramatic look to your image.

When shooting full manual and adjusting your aperture (F-stop), we must adjust other settings to have a correct exposure. In the case of increasing our f-stop, ISO can be of good help to regain the lost light due to closing our aperture. You want to avoid pushing your shutter speeds too high or too low while filming video.

2 – Camera movement

Keep a steady and slow camera movement to add a cinematic look to your shots.

This is one of the simplest ways to add that “cinematic” look that everyone talks about to your video. The reason behind this is that camera movement adds more personality to your shot and makes it more dynamic.

Movements that can help improve your shots are:

• Pan: A pan (or panning shot) is when the camera sweeps horizontally from a fixed position, either left or right. You can use this camera movement to establish locations and track subjects within them. For example, tracking a shark swimming along the reef, or revealing that incredible coral head you are trying to show.
• Tilt: A tilting shot is a camera movement along a fixed vertical axis, either up to down or down to up. Tilting the camera down can create an illusion of distance or depth, while tilting up instills a grandiose feeling. For example, if you are filming a turtle or manta ray swimming by the reef, try to add some tilt upwards to add more strength to the shot.
• Dolly: In both pan and tilt shots, the camera swivels without moving from a stationary, central position. Dolly shots, on the other hand, involve physically moving the camera either forward or backwards. This is a shot that you have already done many times without thinking about it. As we swim forward towards the subject we are already creating a Dolly shot. These shots are perfect for following some action along the reefs or sandy areas. Try to keep a steady hand to not add too many camera shakes while doing this one.
• Tracking and Following: This shot is a tracking shot in which the camera continuously follows the subject’s action. For example, a Stingray swimming along, or a school of Eagle rays gliding through. This shot intends to keep the focus on the subject centered while following along as they make their way through the environment.
• Top Down: Lastly, a shot that is overlooked and underrated is the Top Down shot, which means capturing the scene from above, this works incredibly well with pelagic subjects swimming in blue water, for example, sharks, manta rays, or turtles. Try to get the subject centered and yourself well above them, remember to always keep a safe distance to your subject to not scare or bother them, and point your camera straight down. This shot works really well with reefs too.

A very important thing for these movements to work is to have good buoyancy and good control of your camera. Any shake will be easily seen when adding movement. The best way to pull this off is to keep moving, slowly, and as steady as possible.

When trying to achieve any of these shots, always take into consideration your surroundings, be respectful of the environment, and be mindful of how close you are to the reefs. The last thing you want is to crash into corals while panning around or be in the way of any marine animal while trying to achieve a shot, that is why we want to have perfect buoyancy skills. The more respect you have for the environment the easier it will be for you to achieve your most desired shots

3 – Play with Frame Rates

As a norm, shooting at 24 frames per second (Fps) is what is considered “Cinematic“, but that doesn’t mean that we should always be shooting at those Fps, actually, I never shoot at 24fps myself. I prefer shooting at a higher Fps to have the flexibility to be able to slow down my shot in post-production.

Imagine that you just captured a frogfish catching its prey, if we shot this at 24fps there’s no way we could slow it down and keep a good image quality, but if we had shot it at 60fps means that we could slow our shot down to 40% of the original speed, this translates to being able to see the action slowed down, making the shot even more impressive.

This doesn’t mean that slow motion is always good as sometimes it can make the shot look unnatural. Even though I usually film above 24fps I rarely slow all my footage down, some shots work really well when slowed down, others not that much. So you have to find the combination that works for you. As an example, a series of shots with different speeds could be a wide-angle scene featuring a school of fish on the reef at normal speed, a tighter shot of the group of fish slowed to 60%, and last a portrait or macro of one of the fishes which will work well with a slowed speed of 40%.

One thing is certain, and that is that shooting at higher fps can help remove those unwanted camera shakes, as you slow the clip down the shakes become less obvious. Usually, macro subjects tend to work very well to shoot on higher fps and slow the clip down in post-production.

Important tip: to make sure that your footage looks at its best, when shooting fully manual, make sure you have your shutter speed double your frame rate. This means that when shooting at 24fps we want to have our shutter speed at 1/48 (1/50 on most of the cameras as there’s no 1/48), or when shooting at 60fps then our ideal shutter speed will be 1/120 and so on.

4 – Take advantage of the Sun

For many years we have been told to shoot with the sun on our backs.

This is because this way you can get nice lighting onto your subject without the need of adding much artificial light, like dive lights, and have a nice and smooth light on the scene. However to achieve this correctly, you need to make sure you get your white balance right, or else your image will look very blue or green.

But what if I told you that shooting INTO the sun does give you some pretty incredible images as well? At the end of the day, the rules are made to break them right?

Let me explain how this works, first of all, we need a camera with a high dynamic range that can handle the high contrast. A Gorpo for example is not ideal for these shots, it doesn’t mean that you can’t achieve it with it but it will be much harder. Nowadays most compact and mirrorless cameras have 12-14 stops of dynamic range, which means that they can easily handle these high-contrast situations which is what you need when using backlight. So your subject should be exposed well, and not silhouetted, despite backlighting.

The best time for this would be either early morning or late afternoon, taking advantage of golden hours to have an even more sexy light to play with. When the sun is the strongest, same as on land, it is a bit more challenging to manage these high contrast exposures.

5 – Keep Rolling

Many times when reviewing the footage, I realize that I have stopped recording too early, or I question myself on why haven’t I started recording earlier.

My advice is to record longer than you usually think is good. because sometimes after you lose your attention to the subject and decide to stop recording, then is when a nice movement or behavior happens. So keep recording for a few extra seconds next time you go diving.

And knowing that the space in the memory cards is free, why not keep recording? you can always review and delete what you don’t like after the dives, and more often than not you will find some very nice gems on those extra shots that you got during the dive!

You’d be surprised at how much of that extra footage makes it to your top shots!

I hope these 5 Tips to improve your underwater videography skills help you improve your filming skills and help you get a little better with your underwater filming skills.

There are still many tips and tricks so if this is something that you find interesting, let me know in the comments down below and I will make another post about the best tips for underwater videography.

Don’t forget to let me know in the comments which is your preferred skill to use for underwater videography!

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