Excellent Underwater Photo Book

OK, so I know that most likely not very many of you are going to be looking for underwater photo books on my blog, but I recently was so impressed by a book on the topic that I thought it merited a few minutes attention. I really enjoy underwater photo. If you are interested in looking at some of my shots see my gallery at the Bubbles Below web site.

Martin Edge's The Underwater Photographer is the best underwater photo book I have seen yet. It goes through every possible technique and gives great examples that really help you figure out what they mean. There are great tips throughout and good advice for every type of photography using most any type of camera. It is even up to date enough to tell you some things about new cameras, like the Nikon D200. If you are just getting into SLR photography, there is advice on what lenses to use; if you are using a compact digital, there is advice on how to configure those - there is something for everyone in here. I probably could have saved some money on things that I don't need had I had this book a several years ago.

As an example, I finally managed to understand something I have never understood: magnification levels. I knew that 2:1 is twice life-size, but never what that really means technically. To explain it, Edge put in an exercise - there are several of these scattered throughout the book - where you zoom in on a metric ruler. When the camera is set to its maximum magnification and zoom level, you see how much of the ruler you can see when it is in focus. If you see 35 mm with a film camera, or 23.6 with a 23.6 mm digital CCD, you are at 1:1 magnification. If you see more, you are at less than that, and if you see less, say, 12 mm with a digital, you are at 2:1 magnification. Finally, an explanation that makes sense.

There are some editing mistakes, some of which are just a little annoying, and some of which cause the explanation to be wrong, but on the balance, the book more than makes up for it.