Book Review: Underwater Photography by Tobias Friedrich

Dan Bolt · Issue 82, Jan/Feb 2015 · pp. 74–77

Products mentioned: Underwater Photography by Tobias Friedrich, Canon EOS 5D Mark II, Canon 8-15mm fisheye lens, Canon 100mm macro lens, Seacam housing, Ikelite DS125 strobes

From the outset this lavishly illustrated book hits you with some stunning underwater imagery. The cover shot, aptly titled ‘The Dark Knight’ is just the beginning, with a beautiful two-page split-shot of a humpback whale coming just a few pages later and the quality of photography continuing at that level throughout all 200+ pages. In Tobias’ enthusiastic introduction he says that the best way to read this book is from front to back – and he’s also correct to point out that you will read about terms and concepts in the early chapters that are not fully explained until later in the book. If you didn’t know this and just chose, for example, to judge the book by simply reading the opening chapter on Equipment, then you would indeed think it was missing a lot of explanatory text to describe some of the fundamentals of photography beneath the waves. It is only when taking the book as a whole…