To take good photos underwater, special photographic equipment is necessary. Not only does all the equipment has to be fresh and salt water resistant, it also has to be absolutely leak-proof and pressure resistant to a certain extent (for dives up to 50 meters, after all, six bar!). So much for the physical requirements.

But now the special properties of water and light are added. Unlike when photographing on land, the colour red can only travel about four metres under water. This means that if you are deeper than four to five metres, the sun/daylight can no longer reproduce the red colour. The deeper you go or the further away from the subject, the fewer colours are visible. Finally, only blue tones are visible. Therefore a powerful artificial light source under water is in most cases a must for every photographer. But even with its own light source the so-called extinction (the filtering of light through the water) plays tricks on the underwater photographer. Because if you are more than two meters away from your subject, the beautiful red disappears because the light from the external light source at the camera must first travel two meters to the subject before being reflected back to the camera.

This is one reason why zoom lenses only make limitted sense in under water photogaphy. No matter how much you can zoom in on your subject, the travel distance of the light is the limiting factor, not the zoom capability of the lens. In addition, water is never 100% clear and the small floating particles act like little mirrors, comparable to fog on land, which can cause reflections (backscatter) and make whole series of shots unusable if the light source is incorrectly positioned. This means firstly that the light source must be correctly positioned and secondly that the distance to the subject must be as short as possible. If the distance is too long and is simply made smaller by zooming in, there are too many floating particles between subject and camera and the images will lose both contrast and color. They appear flat, colourless and unattractive. This can neither be ‘repaired’ with filters nor with post-processing. Whatever information is missing in the image cannot easily be added later.

Another problem is that it is impossible to change the battery, whether from the external light source, the flash or the camera under water. A full memory card also ends the photo session or you start to look through the pictures on the camera monitor and delete some of them …
Changing the lens is also only possible in a limitted way, because the lenses, which are inside the waterproof housing, are inaccessible under water. And so-called wet lenses, which allow changing under water, usually cause a strong loss of light sensitivity and sharpness. So most professional photographers either have to decide on the surface what they want to photograph during the dive or they take several cameras with them. This is of course a question of weight and cost, because a good underwater camera equipment quickly weighs over 15 kg with all accessories and costs over € 20’000.

Here is a list of my equipment, which has come together over time:

November 2003:
Canon Powershot S50, camera integrated flash
January 2004:
External strobe Sea&Sea YS 60 TTL, with digital adapter
April 2004:
Canon Powershot S70
August 2004:
Inon lens adapter and wideangle UWL 105AD
August 2005:
Inon fisheye UFL 165AD
September 2006:
Canon Powershot S80 with underwate housing WP-DC1
Oktober 2006:
Inon Macro Lens UCL 165AD
July 2007:
Nikon D200
Lenses Nikkor: 10.5mm f/2.8G ED DX Fisheye, 12-24mm f/4G ED-IF AF-S DX Zoom,
18-70mm f3.5-4.5G ED-IF AF-S DX Zoom, 105mm f/2.8G AF-S VR Micro,
Ikelite underwater housing Nikon D200, Ikelite Sub-Strobes DS-125 (two pieces)
Ikelite strobe arms and plate with quick-release, Sandisk Extreme III 4 GB CF-memory cards
January 2008:
Nikon D300 with Ikelite underwater housing with Inon straight-view finder
February 2008:
Backscatter Macromate Fliplens ( 2:1 ratio)
August 2011:
Switching from Ikelite to Subal underwater housing, with GS180 and WS45 viewfinder optics Upgrade the two Ikelite DS-125 to DS-161 underwater strobes (with integrated LED video light)
September 2011:
Purchase of a second Nikon D300 body (as backup)
July 2015:
After seven and a half years I replaced my faithful Nikon D300 with a Nikon D750 and switched to full format sensor
Lenses: Nikkor 16mm f/2.8 AF-D (Fisheye), Nikkor 18-35mm f/3.5-4.5G ED, Nikkor 105mm f/2.8G AF-S VR Micro
Purchase of a Subal ND750 housing for the Nikon D750 with straight-View and 45 degree special viewfinder optics
July 2017:
Purchase of two dome diffusers for the Ikelte strobes DS 161, to reduce backscatter
March 2023:
Purchase of a second Nikon D750 as a backup
October 2023
Replacement of the Ikelite DS 161 strobes with DS 232 (213Ws with 2500 lumens video light)