If someone builts a working LF underwater system, I will want to borrow/rent it to take pictures as part of my National Park project. There would be some publicity for the creator of the system. Please keep me in mind.
If someone builts a working LF underwater system, I will want to borrow/rent it to take pictures as part of my National Park project. There would be some publicity for the creator of the system. Please keep me in mind.
I just realized this thread is 18 months old. Wow.
Anyway, I believe National Geographic was the first to publish UW photos and I believe they were taken with a LF. I will check my books, but they are a little buried away.
John
Hey Joe, there are a few simple solutions to this. First, since you will only be snorkeling, and will presumably be in shallow water, why not shoot from the surface. I forget the exact term, but you used to be able to buy a viewing bucket, which is just a bucket or bx with a glass or plastic bottom. Stick that in the water and its just like looking through a mask. You could stick your Crown in their and get some nice color shots if the water was flat and the reef shallow.
Second, since you are snorkeling, not diving, you have to come to the surface anyway. Why not make a small wooden pinhole camera for a 4x5 double dark (I made one a few months ago in about an hour). You could easily house one of those in one of the plastic housing bags they sell (you will need a sliding cover for the pinhole, so you can pull the darkslide before you load the bag). Then, throw some weight in the bag, dive down and take a shot, then surface and hand off to your partner for a reload. If you wanted something sharper, you could do the same thing but mount an old cheap 90mm graflex lens to the box at a fixed fcus of about three feet. Still only one shot at a time, but not too onerous for snokeling.
Sounds like fun. Goodluck.
Oh, by the way, Nikonos are finicky pieces of crap.
from http://www.legendarysurfers.com/surf...html#water_box
There is a picture of Doc Ball's first housing... for a Series D graflex.
crazy.
"The Water Box
By 1937, Doc's reputation as a surf photographer was well established. That year, he built his first waterproof camera housing. The watertight "shoots box" housed Doc's replacement for the Kodak folding Autographic - a stripped down Series D Graflex. Not only could he get closer to his wave sliding buddies, but the images were clearer.
"By that time," Doc told me, "I made a water box. I got a stripped down Graflex Series D Graflex camera -- 3 ¼ x 4 ¼ -- and put a water box around it. So, that way, you could open it up and make your shot and then shut it up real quick and it didn't get all wet." Doc laughed. "That thing really did work. I got some terrific shots with it."
Doc's water box had a large brass handle attached so that when he was caught inside, large sets would not wrest it from his grasp. Although the Graflex was big and bulky compared to today's camera bodies used for surf photography, it used large format cut sheet film - 3 ¼ X 4 ¼ -- which made for sharp enlargements. "I traded the chief of photography in the Los Angeles fire department arson squad for one of my Graflex cameras," Doc told Gary. "I made him a three-unit gold inlaid bridge."
Robert Oliver
A few things that came to mind:
-shoot from within a submarine or diving bell
-clear dry bag with port
-glass bottom boat
-giant upside down periscope of sorts?
It also occurred to me that you could make a relatively simple air-tight fixed focus camera. You might have to modify the lens so it is air tight and pressure fit it without shutter, (or a barrel lens with the iris control inside the camera) but I think it could be done. As other members pointed out exposures would be long so a lens cap or cover would be sufficient. To use the camera you would simply weight yourself and the tripod, sink to the bottom and stabilize the tripod, frame the shot, and expose with available light; or swim around painting with a light/strobe. It would be a one-shot deal, and you would be limited to shots from the bottom, but I am guessing if you go to that much trouble being limited to one shot at a time won't be the end of the world.
To solve the mass/bulk issue you could design a streamlined self-propelled housing.
One type of camera could be build into a watertight housing: an areal camera with an roll film back, I gues.....
Never seen one however.
Peter
I've considered all these criteria and as you go bigger you start chasing diminishing returns. A bigger camera means bigger flat surfaces of the housing, which means more weight (and mass) to get the requisite strength and stiffness. A bigger housing means more buoyancy, which often means adding weight to get to neutral buoyancy. And even though the camera may now be neutrally buoyant, it still weighs as much topside, a big problem entering and exiting the water. And regardless of neutral buoyancy, the mass is unchanged underwater, a factor when trying to swim with the camera. And a bigger housing has much more drag; in dives with any decent amount of current (drift dives/springs/caves/Gulfstream wrecks) a Nikonos with a small flash is about all you want to handle, much less a housed 35mm-size system or larger.Originally Posted by Archphoto
You could certainly build a 4x5 u/w system, but due to the size of the resultant system I think it would not be very practical to *dive* with. It would be better suited to use in carefully-scouted locations where you would drop it in, get your shots, and then bring everything out.
They are ill discoverers that think there is no land, when they can see nothing but sea.
-Francis Bacon
Like a lot of people I've wondered about this myself. A large ziploc (they make huge sizes now) with a hole cut to size for the lens and a tight band around the hole was my fanciful solution.
Of possible historic interest is a book on the subject titled "The Photography of Aquatic Animals in their Natural Environment" published by the Bureau of Fisheries from, I believe, 1908. You can download a copy for free as it's in the public domain: http://www.archive.org/details/photo...faqu00reigrich
Are you sure? I remember underwater shots in NG taken with a Rollei TLR in a Rolleimarin housing.
Posting Permissions
Reply With Quote
Bookmarks