Underwater Night Dive Help!!!

[Lindsay.Stow]

Hey everyone I'm new here and looking for some help/advice... I'm going to Hawaii in January and will be snorkeling with the manta rays. It's a night dive and I want my pictures to come out great. I've swam with them twice there before, the first time I got a cheap disposable camera and none of the pix came out. The second time I rented a crappy digital camera in an underwater box. Those pix didn't come out either.

I have a Nikon AW100 underwater camera. I'm wondering if there are any good cameras out there that aren't ridiculously expensive that I should try instead? Maybe a gopro? Should I use mine? Any opinions? Suggestions? Lol I'm open to anything! HELP!

 

[W.Y.Photo]

What do you mean by "didn't come out", were the pictures really dark, really blurry? It would help if we knew what the issue you have had is like in more detail.

Underwater photography isn't easy, there's a lot of factors that come into play.
It gets dark underwater very fast, which makes it difficult to photograph without an external light source.

 

[AlanKlein]

I used a strobe with a Nikonos film camera awhile back. It may have been at night but I forget - it's been quite awhile. But you really need a strobe.

Here's an eagle ray but during the day - no strobe I don't think.

 

[waday]

Underwater photography isn't easy, there's a lot of factors that come into play.
It gets dark underwater very fast, which makes it difficult to photograph without an external light source.

I used a strobe with a Nikonos film camera awhile back. It may have been at night but I forget - it's been quite awhile. But you really need a strobe.

+3 on the external light source/strobe.

My "experience" with underwater photography is point and shoot snorkeling in Hawaii. We were snorkeling in probably 40-foot depths and had some eagle rays swim right underneath us. The photos are dark, and this was in bright, mid-day sunlight with the flash on. They were probably 20-feet deep at the time. There's a brand that I can't think of but "Sealife" comes to mind. They may have something.

Or you could ask the company you're going out with to see what they've seen people take with them?

 

[pthrift]

Budget is the question. Sea life makes what you want/need-- if you can afford it.

Gopro will also make an excellent choice--

In either option, you're going to spend a lot more cash to get lights (either video or strobe) to get the images to turn out very well.

 

[pthrift]

Also - look up scubaboard.com/forums


Its a scuba diving site but they have a dedicated section for underwater photography that is a wealth of info