If you have some experience with video on land you will know that many professional videographers do not use autofocus but rely on follow focus devices. Basically those are accessories that control the focus ring of the camera and avoid the shake that you would create if you were turning the focus ring with your hand.

The bad news is that there are no devices to perform follow focus underwater and if you use a focus knob you will indeed create camera shake. This is the primary reason why I do not use focus knobs on any of my lenses with the exception of the Olympus 60mm macro and in those rare occasions I uses it I do not actually use to obtain focus but to ensure I am at the closest working distance.

So how do you achieve good focus if you can’t use a focus ring and continuous autofocus cannot be trusted? There are essentially three methods that I will discuss here and provide some examples:

1. Set and forget
2. Set and adjust
3. Optimised Continuous Autofocus

You have noticed that there is still an option for continuous autofocus in the list. Before we drill down in the method I want to give some background on autofocus technology.

If after reading this post you are still confused I recommend you get some tuition either joining my Red Sea trip or 1 to 1 (offered in Milton Keynes area in UK).

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Contrast Detect vs Phase Detect and Hybrid Autofocus

The internet is full of autofocus videos showing how well or bad certain camera perform and how one system is superior to another. The reality is that professional cameramen will use follow focus in majority of cases and this is because the camera does not know who the subject is.

Though it is true that one focus system may perform better than other you need to consider that Red cameras use contrast detection autofocus same as your cheap compact camera so clearly autofocus must not be that important.

The second fact is that any camera focus system needs contrast including phase detect. Due to scattering of blue light in water there are many situations where the contrast is low in the scene resulting in focus hunt of the camera autofocus system.

So my first recommendation is to ignore the whole discussion about which focus system is superior because the reality is that there will be situation where the focus will be difficult to achieve and the technology will not come to help. You need to devise strategies to make things work and this is what this post is about.

Let’s go now in the techniques.

Method 1: Set and Forget

As the name implies with this method we set focus at the beginning of the shot and never change this again. This means disabling the camera continuous focus in video mode. This is essential so that this technique works.

This works in three situations:

1. Using a lens at the hyperfocal distance behind a flat port
2. Using wet wide angle lenses
3. Using fisheye lenses

Method 1.a Hyperfocal Distance Method

I am not going to write a dissertation on this there is good content on wikipedia worth a read: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hyperfocal_distance

The key concept is that depth of field at a given aperture and subject distance will reach infinity. The wider the lens closer this subject distance. For example a 14mm lens on a micro four third body at f/5.6 is 1.65 meters so if you focus on an object at this distance anything between 0.8 meters and infinity will be in focus. As you close the aperture the hyperfocal distance diminishes. This technique is good for medium or reefscape shots where you don’t mind that the whole frame is sharp in focus. It is not suitable for macro or close shots as the aperture required would be too small and diffraction would kick in.

Looking at the past CWK clips if continuous autofocus was disabled and he had focussed just at the start of the scene at 1.85 meters no focus was required until the manta was at 0.9 meters. Note that distances have to be adjusted to account for magnification of water effect.

Once you have your lens and aperture setting you can quickly work out some distances in your scene and fine tune your expertise.

Obviously shooting those shots with a flat port is not exactly the most common method however understanding this technique is paramount to the other two.

Method 1.bc Wet Lenses and Fisheyes

Fisheye lenses tend to have an incredible amount of depth of field even wide open and therefore the set and forget applies in full here without even bothering about hyperfocal distance. Usually focussing on your feet is all is required.

The real revelation to this technique are afocal wet lenses. Afocal means that the focal length of the wet lens is infinity and the light coming through does not diverge or converge. Together with the magnification factor typically 0.3-0.4x means you get to a fisheye situation without the same amount of distortion.
This is the primary reason to buy a lens like the Nauticam WWL-1 or even an Inon wet lens with afocal design.

My Tiger and Hammerhead videos are shot with the camera locked in manual focus after focussing on my feet.

Even when the shark hits the camera the image is in focus

I do not have technical information on newer Nauticam WACP-1 or WACP-2 so am not in a position to confirm if those lenses are afocal or not and therefore I cannot help you. I would think consideration on depth of field still apply. If Nauticam or a shop or user lends me a set up for pool testing I can provide optimise settings for WACP.

Set and forget is the number one method for wide angle and reefscapes underwater and it is easy.

Method 2: Set and Adjust

As the name implies this method sets the focus at the beginning of the shot and then adjusts when required this is necessary especially in macro situations.

The set and adjust method varies depending on how the camera managed push on focus. If the camera manages a refocus using a half press shutter no other settings are required other than disabling continuous auto focus.

For cameras that do not have a refocus half shutter setting you need to operate in manual focus and the set a custom button to perform a single auto focus.

In both cases you need peaking to be active during the shot.

Procedure:

1. Set the focus as required using half shutter or AF On button
2. Observe the peaking to ensure the subject is in focus if required moving the camera.
3. In case of loss of focus refocus using the shutter or the AF On button

This method works well with macro where typically you set focus and then move the camera back and forth to keep focus, in those cases where you want to switch focus on another part of the frame you refocus. This would have helped Brian in the two crab situation.

As the refocus does bring a moment of blur in the clip you need to ensure that when you trigger the refocus the camera will succeed this is best achieved when using a single area of focus.

Method 3: Optimised Continuous Autofocus

Although autofocus has some risks there are situation when this is required those include:

• Shooting aperture that do not have sufficient depth of field to warrant a set and forget
• Using dome ports and rectilinear lenses from what I have experienced those lenses do not work well with hyperfocal distances due to physics of dome ports

Obviously the best option remains using a wet lens and set and forget however there are instances where we absolutely want straight lines for example shooting divers or models. In those cases we will use a dome port and as we can’t use a focus gear because the camera would shake we need autofocus.

Focus Area Settings

Cameras have a selection of modes to set the area that will be used by autofocus:

1. Face / Animal recognition -> locks on recognised shapes
2. Multi area -> selects the highest contrast area in a number of smaller area of the frame cameras have up to 225 or more areas and you can customise the shape of it
3. Single area -> an area of selectable size and position in the frame
4. Tracking -> tracks the contour of an object in the frame

Face recognition and animal recognition are not useful in our case.

Tracking requires the object to keep the shape within the frame this is useful for nudibranches for example or anything that does not change shape in the frame, a fish turning for example will be lost by this method so this is seldom used. To be honest this fails also on land most times.

So we really are left with multi area and single area.

My advice is to avoid multi area because particles in the water for example can generate sufficient contrast to fool the camera and make it lock on it.

So the best option is to use single area, I typically set this to a size smaller than the central third of a nine block grid. With this configuration is also possible to focus on a subject off the centre by moving the area within the frame. This setting works well when the subject is tracked by our movement and the subject is in the centre which is the majority of situations.

This video is shot on a 12-60 mid range zoom using single area AF for all scenes including macro.

The single more significant risk for single area is that if the centre of the frame goes to blue water the camera will go hunting so if you are shooting in caves or on a wall make sure the AF area is on one side of the frame to avoid hunting or lock occasionally focus to prevent the camera seek focus that won’t be found.

Conclusion

Achieving focus in underwater video requires different techniques from land use and a good understanding of ports and optics.

If you think you are not skilled enough and need help from autofocus my advice is to get an afocal wet wide angle lens. This will transform your shooting experience and guarantee all your wide angle to be in focus. If you work in a macro situation you need to master the single AF setting of your camera and make sure you are super stable.

The most difficult scenario is using dome ports and this is one of the reasons I do not recommend those for video. If you are adamant on rectilinear lenses than the specific settings.

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Thanks to Brian Lim and WK’S gone diving for providing some examples.

When I started thinking about writing this post I thought of presenting a whole piece on the theory of focus and how a camera achieves it however I later decided it made more sense to start from example and then drill down on the theory based on specific cases.

So we will look at three common issues, understand why they happened and then discuss possible mitigations.

Issue 1: Wide angle Manta Focus Hunt

This clips has been provided by WK’s and has been taken during a trip to Socorro

The water is quite dark and murky and there is a substantial amount of suspended particles in water otherwise we would not have mantas. The water is also fairly milky and therefore the image lacks contrast which is not ideal for the camera to focus as all cameras, including those working on phase detection AF need contrast.

WK’s had a flat port and was shooting quite narrow aperture at f/7.1 which should ensure plenty depth of field on his 14mm lens.

In this clip you can literally see the autofocus pulsating trying to find focus the hunting carries on until the manta is very close at around 15 seconds in the clip. At that point the clips is stable however the overall approach has been ruined.

Diagnostics

The key observations are that the subject was not in focus at the very beginning of the shot and then you can distinctively see how some fairly bright particles come into the scene at 0.04 for example and disturb the camera process as they create a strong contrast against the black manta and the camera can’t decide who is the subject so it starts hunting. When the manta is close and well defined in the frame the camera knows she is the subject and therefore focus issues stop. The white particles in the water when the manta is far are large and bright enough to be picked up by the matrix point of the camera AF this is true regardless of the manta being in the frame and the same would have applied if another fish was doing a photobomb.

Solution

The problem in this clip is not new to video shooters similar things happen when you have the bride walking to the altar and someone the priest or the husband steps into the frame and they are far apart. On land you would keep control using manual focus or if you were really daring you would use tracking. In our case WK’s does not have focus gear and it is not possible for him to manually change the focus.

WK’s could have used tracking  if available on the camera. With tracking you need to ensure that the camera can lock onto the manta and then if it does that the manta does not turn or change shape and nothing bigger comes in front. At this point everything would work. This is a high risk technique only worth trying in clear water and when there are no particle in the water so in this scenario not advised.

The last option and the solution to this issue was for WKs to switch to manual focus and engage peaking. Use a single AF on to focus on his feet or an intermediate target and then check the manta was in focus. If focus was lost WK’s could have triggered AF again at least being able to control how many times the camera was refocussing.

Issue 2: Macro Subject Switching

This other clip has been provided by Brian Lim and it is a macro situation.

We can see that there are particles flying in the water and some other small critters at close range. The main subjects are the large crab and the two small crabs in the foreground.

Brian is not happy about the focus on this shot as not everything is sharp.

Diagnostics

Despite the murky water Brian has correctly locked focus on the crabs in the foreground and due to the high level of magnification the camera does not have sufficient depth of field to make the small and large crab crisp in the frame. It is possible that Brian could not detect on this screen that the crab behind was not sharp which could be avoided with peaking. In any case it is likely that there is no possibility to have this shot sharp end to end. Brian is super stable in the shot so he was set to make it work.

Solution

Brian does not have a focus gear on this camera this would have been required to pull focus in the same shot on the small crab and then go onto the larger crab.

However even in this situation in manual focus Brian could have shot two clips focussing on the two different focal planes and then managed this in post. It is critical to be able to review focus on screen when we shoot or to review right after before we leave the scene.

Issue 3: Too many fish and too much water

The last clip is mine and is taken during a recent trip to Sataya reef.

I have deliberately left this clip uncut because it lets you see that you can use autofocus in water behind a dome port and for most part it works but there are some pitfalls so the most photogenic dolphins at 00:50 are initially blurred.

Diagnostics

I was not expecting the sheer amount of dolphin on the day and certainly I was not expecting them this close so I had a standard zoom lens at 24mm FF equivalent behind a dome port. In most cases I managed to have some fish in the AF area of the camera but at 00:45 and 00:58 the camera does not have anything in the middle of the frame and goes on a hunt.

Solution

Working with a dome port and a lens of that nature does not warrant you will have enough depth of field to leave the camera locked even at f/8 so some refocussing activity was indeed required. In this case I was using a single AF area in the centre and in those moments the camera has just the blue and nothing to focus on and goes on a hunt, as soon as the subject is back in the AF area the camera locks back in. Note that the AF change speed is not fast enough to follow when the dolphin come too close therefore here the only real solution was to have a wider lens, however I could have avoided the hunt if I had set the camera to AF lock and intercepted the moment the AF area was empty preventing the camera to re-engage.

Summary

In all examples of this post the issues have been generated by a lack of intervention. All the situations I have analysed could have been dealt with at time of the shot for most part and did not require extra gear. I believe that when we are in water there is already lots to think about and therefore, we make mistakes or not apply the decisive corrective action that would have saved the shots.

In the next post I will drill down in focus settings and how they can help your underwater shots and also discuss how those apply to macro, wide and mid shots. I am also happy to look at specific examples or issues please get in touch. Specific coaching or troubleshooting is provided in exchange of a drink or two.

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