Underwater photography has come a long way since Louis Boutan took the first underwater photographs in 1893. His foremost challenge was keeping his camera dry. His solution: a massive copper housing, so large it had to be tethered to a pressure-compensating balloon. Inside his housing was a 5x7-inch wet-plate camera capable of exposing a single frame per dive.

Some would argue that our greatest challenge today is still keeping our cameras dry, but the reality is that modern housed and amphibious cameras are more reliable and, thankfully, more ergonomically enabled than Boutan's creation. We now enjoy a variety of quality underwater imaging options, from simple point-and-shoot cameras to complete professional systems.

Underwater photography is easier and better than ever before with advances such as through-the-lens (TTL) exposure compensation and auto-focus technology. Yet, change in photographic paradigms is now evolving in quantum leaps, and the way we capture and store images from beneath the sea will inevitably incorporate these new technologies. Here is my best guess of what worthwhile new options will likely be available to underwater photographers in the very near future—and some that won't.

Some systems long revered by underwater photographers have become obsolete, and other systems fall into a market black hole. A good example is the Nikonos RS, Nikon's amphibious single-lens-reflex camera. The legendary RS has achieved a cult following, with used RS bodies going for astronomical prices in camera stores and on eBay. Yet despite the loyalty of this small niche, a business decision was made to discontinue it. While the conventional Nikonos V and accessory lenses still remain available, RS shooters have been forced to accept that someday soon there will be no more replacement parts and they'll have to explore new options.

One product that's gaining acceptance is the new Subeye, a Swiss amphibious camera system that uses Nikon lenses behind glass ports, as well as RS water contact lenses by means of an adapter. Regrettably, there is no auto-focus in this system (it manually focuses via a power drive lever), but the viewfinder is big and bright to enhance viewing while wearing a face mask. I recommend it to shooters looking for a substitute for the RS.

Today's conventional housings are smaller and more compact. Companies like Ikelite, Sea and Sea, Seacam, Subal, Aquatica and Nexus are making quality capsules for topside cameras. Price and features vary, but look for systems that offer:
• special swiveling 45-degree viewfinders (Seacam)
• external close-up lenses (Nexus)
• custom filters for shooting over-unders (Subal)
• levers and knobs to access virtually all the camera controls (all).

The most important evolution in still photography will inevitably be digital image capture. For now, the massive amount of information stored on a single frame of film is beyond what digital systems provide. The current professional standard is to capture the image on film and then digitize via a scanner. This electronic stream of information is then imported to Adobe Photo Shop, Kodak's Photo CD or some other image manipulation software by the photographer or by the client.

Even if there is no intention to modify the original image, slides are still scanned by magazines and ad agencies to place them into layouts for printing. Scanned images can also be sent via the internet and, in fact, the commerce of stock photography is now largely driven by online research of photo collections. We may still capture our images in much the same way we always have, but the way the images are brought to the printed page and the web have changed dramatically and rapidly.

Clearly the next step will be capturing underwater images electronically. Ikelite has been very active in creating housings for consumer digital still cameras, and at least one housing manufacturer has shown a conceptual prototype of a housing for the high-end Nikon D1 digital camera.

For underwater shooters, the initial problem with digital cameras was resolution, but the new generation of megapixel cameras suggests that very soon we will have sufficient resolution via digital images, at least for most applications. The 30x40- inch decorator print may still be best derived from film, but most magazines use images no larger than 8x10 inches. A 72 dpi resolution is all that is required for the web. In these cases, digital still cameras are already able to deliver the goods.

Power and storage capacities are really the only remaining challenges that digital cameras must overcome before they become widely accepted for underwater use. In an environment where you can't easily stop to change batteries, the huge power draw from digital cameras is definitely a problem. More efficient internal batteries or housed external power packs are the obvious solutions here.

The other, more significant problem is finding a storage medium with sufficient capacity to capture all the images recorded during a dive at a high level of resolution. In a recent issue of the photo industry trade publication PTN, Jennifer Gidman writes, "Back in the digital camera Stone Age, convenience was not exactly a main selling point. Cameras usually had to be attached to the computer in order to download images (dragging a Quadra behind you as you chased after a lioness and her cubs roaming the Serengeti could not have been considered an ideal working situation)."

Underwater photographers faced the same problems chasing lionfish, but even more so! If the capacity of an embedded storage unit reached capacity while under water, there was no solution but to surface and download. Imagine trying to download images to your laptop computer while sitting in an inflatable boat in Papua New Guinea. No wonder film has remained the medium of choice.

But relief may soon be at hand. Now there are removable storage cards (SmartMedia, CompactFlash, Flashfilm and others) that provide a potential solution. Emphasis on potential, for there remains a significant problem. As Gidman puts it, "As digital cameras continue to barrel ahead into the next millennium, storage devices still have to race to keep up. True high-res digital cameras produce huge files, which limits storage capacity and slows down processing time. That can spell disaster for the photographer who has just taken a shot and missed five others because that mega-megabyte file is taking its sweet time to write and register, or for someone who has to choose on the spot what stored shots to delete since the card has reached its capacity limit."

Back to Basics?

All things considered, maybe film isn't such a bad option after all—for now. But things will change. The cameras we use to take the pictures will be different in the not-so-distant future, and the media we use to record the images will likely change. I don't think film is going away, but digital will be an increasingly viable option. For those who shoot film, technologies like Kodak's Picture CD will alter the way we archive and transmit images. For anyone in the business of underwater photography, the web will be the conduit to view and purchase the rights to imagery. It all comes back to digital for storing photographs, transmitting photographs, and ultimately even capturing photographs. That's our world and welcome to it.