Coppo’s Camera Class

I’ve said before. It’s not what you’ve got, but how you use it. And particularly when underwater, Glenn Coppo wanted to know how!

Last week, I had the pleasure of conducting a bespoke underwater camera class with Glenn. Or, ‘Coppo’s Camera Class’ as we dubbed it.

As well as wishing to learn more about photography in general (underwater and on land) Glenn also wished to understand his own camera more.

We spent the first 2 hours going over the various modes and functions of his Olympus OMD EM1Mk2, and how they also worked whilst inside his Ikelite housing. We spent some time in the classroom as well as some pre-dive practice in the pool.

At the time, Glenn was using twin video lights, so we tailored the course to suit that as best as possible.

But whilst we had the controlled conditions of the pool allowed me to clearly demonstrate the importance and power of underwater strobes to Glenn, as seen in the 2 images above and below.

After the pool session we headed over to Alma Bay for a proper dive. There Glenn could put to practice the underwater camera class techniques we’d been discussing.

We had divemaster candidate Lachie with us on the dive. The extra set of (mask-clad) eyes was handy as he also spotted a number of cool subjects for us too.

After our dives we spent some time reviewing Glenn’s images. He was thrilled to see a clear improvement in the number of keepers as well as the overall improvement in his shots.

He was also keen to learn more post production techniques, to get the best out of the raw images his camera could shoot. We enjoyed quite a few coffees as we went through his images in Lightroom together.

Since our weekend together Glenn went home and invested in the addition of 2 dive new strobes for his set up, making for a VERY sweet underwater rig.

Glenn was kind enough to send me an email after the course.

He said ” Thank you mate, for your time. You are an awesome teacher. I have learnt so much, I will take the knowledge you have given me and that will stay with me for the rest of my life. Thanks again“.

It was my pleasure Glenn, thanks for being such an enthusiastic and willing student, as well as a great diver.

I look forward to more dives with Glenn in the future, as well as teaching my next students!

Safe bubbles and happy snapping..!

Kobie.