STE P BY STE P

Sea for yourself

1 Feeling swell

On a shoot like this, weather isn’t as important as tidal swell and wind speed/direction. To find out the size of the surf in your location use the website magicseaweed.com (or the MSW smartphone app) – it’ll tell you the size of waves you can expect over the next week or so.

2 Suits you

If the weather is good and you just want to have a play with your Nikon, pop some old shorts and a T-shirt on, but if the weather is bad, or you’re taking things a bit more seriously, you’ll be much more comfortable in a wetsuit. Renting one costs about £10/$20 a day.

3 Bag it up

Keep your camera dry by putting it in waterproof housing. Dedicated D-SLR waterproof housing can cost thousands, whereas a waterproof D-SLR bag costs between £50-£100/$75-$150. We recommend testing the bag without the camera before starting out.

4 Sharp continuous focus

Select AF-C in the autofocusing menu (hold down the AF button and turn the command dial until AF-C is displayed). If you find that it isn’t hitting the mark, put your lens into manual focus and preset the focus to around one to two metres to get the first part of the wave nice and sharp.

5 Freeze the sea

In aperture-priority mode, set an aperture of f/13 to maximise the depth of field and get as much of the scene in focus as possible. Set continuous burst drive on your Nikon. Choose an ISO between 400-800 to ensure the camera chooses a fast shutter speed to freeze the wave.

6 Check for clipping

In the Playback menu, under Playback display options make sure Highlights is ticked, then navigate to a photo and use your multi selector to check for clipped highlights – clipped areas will flash. We dialled in -0.67 stops of exposure compensation for this reason.