Every year we run several snorkeling photography workshops in different destinations around the world. Currently, we have our Belize Liveaboard Photo Safari and our Alor-Komodo Snorkeling Photography Workshop. As the Snorkel Venture Photo Pros, Duxy and I started running these different tours in 2022 and we had a blast, and the guests, ahem, I mean students, were able to improve their underwater images significantly over the course of the workshop. We cover a number of topics in these workshops, from light, composition, and subject selection, to editing. One of the main principles that we really hone in on is wide-angle photography. You can find out why we spend so much time covering wide-angle photography here. Basically, it’s the best, most practical tool for the job.
Unless you are using a GoPro, the lens on a compact camera, even at its widest, is not a true wide-angle lens. The field of view on a TG-6 at its widest is around 60°. A true wide-angle lens will have a minimum FOV of around 100°, with most being 120° and wider. In the eyes of most underwater photographers wider is better. Now, if you just purchased an Olympus TG series camera or any other compact camera for that matter in preparation for your snorkeling trip or underwater photography workshop, don’t panic, there are some fantastic wide-angle lens adapters for the TG series and just about any other camera model out there.
While you by no means need to have a wide-angle lens to join or to get great results from a snorkeling photography workshop, it would be very useful, and practical since it is sort of the focus of the workshop. In the past, we never urged guests to purchase any aftermarket camera accessories as we didn’t want them to feel they needed to spend even more money. Now, since we’ve run several of these workshops and we’ve seen the feedback, we now feel confident in making this particular aftermarket accessory suggestion.
To find out more about wide-angle lenses check out these blogs below. Also, feel free to contact us with your camera questions, we are more than happy to help. You can e-mail me, Alex Lindbloom, at alex@divesafariasia.com
