Fifteen years ago, traveling with an underwater camera meant carrying a dedicated camera system and housing along with all my scuba gear\u2014two full suitcases and a carry-on bag. These days, the cost and aggravation of transporting that much equipment can pretty much ruin the idea of traveling at all.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Last year, I bought a DIVEVOLK SeaTouch 4 Max housing for my iPhone 15 Pro Max, along with a red filter and a few other little doohickeys I thought I might need. Compared with the cost of housing any of my APS-C, full-frame, or medium-format cameras, it was ridiculously inexpensive. So inexpensive that I reread the reviews to make sure the housing wasn\u2019t made from Swiss cheese or cardboard.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Before 2023, I hadn\u2019t been diving in eleven years. My dive gear\u2014and I\u2014were old, crusty, and out of practice. But getting back into the water with a camera was life-affirming and immediately comfortable, like getting back on a bicycle. By streamlining both my camera system and dive gear, I was also able to reduce the cost and stress of traveling to a single suitcase.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
There was one problem.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It occurred to me that if the housing failed at depth, the phone inside it\u2014my lifeline to the digital world and the place where I stored nearly everything I needed for the trip\u2014would probably flood. Getting home could become interesting in all the wrong ways.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So I went to Back Market and bought a heavily used iPhone 14 Pro for about half the price of a new phone. That would become my underwater camera. If it didn\u2019t work, I could still use the iPhone 15 and hope for the best.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Since buying the setup, I have photographed dives in the Florida caverns and on the reefs of Bonaire and Dominica, with no complaints whatsoever.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When I made this photograph, there was a fair amount of sargassum in the water, and visibility was cloudy. The original image was drained of color and predominantly blue. It was pleasing, but not quite the photograph I wanted.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The pilings already felt less like a human structure than an underwater forest, with the divers drifting between them like unfamiliar wildlife. I converted the photograph to black and white, then added a little clarity and contrast in Lightroom. The monochrome treatment separated the light, sediment, divers, and encrusted columns more clearly while preserving the murky atmosphere that first attracted me.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Although I had brought both a video light and a red filter, I found myself loving the black-and-white renderings from this location. Removing the color seemed to make the underwater world stranger, quieter, and somehow more timeless.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
All in all, the DIVEVOLK housing\u2014and my decision to trust an Apple phone as an underwater camera\u2014has been one of my best photographic purchases in recent years. I love the results I am getting, and DIVEVOLK is firmly on my radar as I continue rebuilding my underwater photography system.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Fifteen years ago, traveling with an underwater camera meant carrying a dedicated camera system and housing along with all my scuba gear\u2014two full suitcases and a carry-on bag. These days, the cost and aggravation of transporting that much equipment can pretty much ruin the idea of traveling at all. Last year, I bought a DIVEVOLK … Continue reading “A Forest for the Trees”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":580,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22,102,15,62,134],"tags":[91,65,18],"class_list":["post-579","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-low-light-photography","category-nature","category-travel-photography","category-underwater","category-wildlife","tag-backlight","tag-black-and-white","tag-travel-photography"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/earthtosteve.com\/luxWP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/579","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/earthtosteve.com\/luxWP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/earthtosteve.com\/luxWP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/earthtosteve.com\/luxWP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/earthtosteve.com\/luxWP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=579"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/earthtosteve.com\/luxWP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/579\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":584,"href":"https:\/\/earthtosteve.com\/luxWP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/579\/revisions\/584"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/earthtosteve.com\/luxWP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/580"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/earthtosteve.com\/luxWP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=579"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/earthtosteve.com\/luxWP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=579"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/earthtosteve.com\/luxWP\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=579"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}