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Choosing a Film
One of the most important things to remember about film is to take a good supply of it with you. If you have a favorite film, you can be certain that it won't be available where you are going to be diving. Underwater photographers are heavy film users. It is fairly normal to shoot one roll per dive. If you are going to be doing 20 dives, take at least 20 rolls with you.
There are a lot of different types of film on the market, and I won't try to discuss the merits of each one but just give a few guidelines based on my experience. You can use most film s successfully underwater.
Slide Film Vs Print Film
There are advantages and disadvantages of both types to film. It depends how you are going to use your pictures.
For slide film, one of the most important advantages is that you can see the quality of your pictures without having them printed. However, it is expensive to get good prints from slides. If you intend to give slide shows you will probably get your slides duplicated to avoid damaging the originals.
With print film, you normally have a greater margin of error. You underexpose or overexpose print film and still get good results. If you do that with some slide films, you can end up with nothing. Print films generally have a much finer grain at higher speeds. You can use a ISO 400 or 800 film and get results comparable to ISO 100 Slide film. There is a good deal of variation in quality when it comes to printing.
For close-up work most photographers go for a slow fine grain film, as this produces high quality results. Popular slide films are:
Fujichrome Velvia, RDP50 RDP100
Kodachrome 25 or 64
Kodak Underwater Film
Each of these films are excellent but have different colour balances. This is where preference comes in. If you like warm films, go for Kodachrome. If you like a film with strong blues and greens, go for Fuji.
For wide angle work you really want to use a film with a speed of ISO 200 or faster to enable you to get a useful depth of field. Of course, you can use slower films but you will probably end up with dark backgrounds or pictures with only a narrow range of focus.
You may want to experiment with other film types like Infra Red Film and black and white film. Each of these films can produce exciting results in the right circumstances.
Try black and white film on wreck dives or when photographing silhouettes (Ilford HP5 and FP4 are good). Black and white is not so good on colourful coral reef scenes.
Infrared film can produce some unexpected and interesting colour variations.
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