At first I felt guilty leaving my Nikon SLR and its massive aluminum housing and giant dome port and two bulky strobes back in the office.

I mean, here I was diving with a little toy camera and shooting with either its tiny built-in flash or just available light, it didn't seem right - where was the weight, the drag, all the seals and sync cords to maintain? But the pictures were way cool.

It was around then that a good friend, a professional photographer, came into the studio and admired a couple of 8x10 prints he found sitting on the counter.

His eyes lit up when I asked him if he wanted to see the brand new camera system I had used to capture the fish portraits he had found so impressive - he's very keen and was no doubt imagining a huge, complicated and appropriately expensive high tech system.

It was when I brought my little toy in from the backroom and his face fell - twenty years of experience and untold thousands invested in equipment instantly devalued - that I knew we were onto something.

Then we mounted a Sea & Sea accessory wide-angle lens on the front and with a little filtration and computer color correction we started a revolution. We were startled to discover a new and unique look to underwater wide-angle photography - full of natural color and visual depth.

The time-tested technique for shooting film is to find a strong foreground subject, blast it with a strobe or two to bring out the color and aim the camera towards the surface so the background doesn't go black or disappear into a blue gloom.

It works fine (we've used it a lot) - but it is limiting and doesn't really capture the spirit of being underwater.

Now with digital we get color, and it's not just in the foreground, but goes all the way through the picture. It's sort of a cross between a gentle hand-colored look and what the underwater world would look like if it wasn't just so dang blue down there.

We're actually shooting underwater landscapes - even panoramas.

Needless to say, we sold a lot of the Canon systems and there are lots happy photographers out there. We've taken our Nikon D100 Digital-SLR down in a moderate sized housing - but we still love our fleet of Canon point&shoots

Study at the pictures on this page.

The close-ups are shot with the camera's little built-in flash and the wide-angle are just available light with minimal computer color correction.

If you've read this far you're probably very interested in underwater digital, so contact us and we'll let you know about the latest toys and techniques, what gear we're selling and renting, and what's coming next.

All Photos taken by Jim and Odile Scheiner

Copyright © 2003 Jim Scheiner
Contents may only be used with the express permission of Jim Scheiner.

E-mail us at RAINBOW VISIONS LTD