Shooting RAW, auto white balance, & strobes

[lwang06]

Hi - I'm new to understanding UW photography and have been looking to upgrade my camera and photo shooting abilities. I just had a few basic questions that I wanted to make sure I understood correctly going forward which may help me lean towards a camera and accessories.

1) How big of a deal is autowhite balance setting if you are are planning on using a strobe or shooting RAW.

Do most people shooting RAW set their cameras to autowhite balance or do most shooters fix it during their editing. Also if you were adding strobes would you need to set this since the strobes would be bringing light back into your photos??

I am asking because I was looking into the canon g7x vs g7x Mark II, the II doesn't offer the auto white balance button which I think would be useful if you were snorkeling and not using strobes etc. However it seems that most people just fix this with photo shop or something? I would eventually like to purchase strobes as well once I can get a grasp on things and have the $$ for the upgrades!

I'm just curious what set ups or editing processing most people use?

I've seen great photos with complex rigs and others that say they dont use strobes and just touch up using lightroom. Any input would be appreciated!

 

[MaxBottomtime]

I shoot in RAW with two strobes and always use auto white balance. I still adjust the WB in Photoshop occasionally.

 

[Storker]

If at all possible, I shoot exclusively in raw file format, both topside and UW. I never bother with WB, since camera WB doesn't affect my files one iota. So it's always auto WB. My camera defaults to a given WB setting when flash is on, so I get constant WB anyway.

I PP all my pics in Lightroom (varying from a slight crop to extensive pulling and pushing of the histogram, tuning saturation and WB, tweaking sharpness, clarity etc.), so if I'm not quite happy with the auto WB, it's very, very easy to tweak it in post.

 

[PatW]

I shoot in RAW with auto white balance. I shoot manual. I generally leave the shutter speed alone. I adjust exposure mainly with ISO adjustments. I adjust f stop for effect. I adjust the strobes power at times.

In post processing, I use Lightroom. I can get a pretty good look on a well exposed picture about 90 percent of the time.

 

[ColoDale]

RAW and JPEG but this affects card writing time. I use auto white balance but I have the ability to use a slate for manual white balance (but don't). Two strobes with diffusers. All manual - shutter speed and f-stops. I don't use TTL so I have to adjust in my head the lighting for exposure. I adjust strobe power manually. Then I bracket shots. If necessary I use photoshop for any adustments. So out of 400-500 photos I may get 50-60 good ones and 5-15 really good ones.

 

[Storker]

So out of 400-500 photos I may get 50-60 good ones and 5-15 really good ones.

“Twelve significant photographs in any one year is a good crop.” – Ansel Adams

 

[Storker]

I've seen great photos with complex rigs

Equipment does not a photographer make. However, some common UW issues like quality of light, and backscatter are most efficiently handled by a couple of strobes on long arms. And a bigger sensor is better in low light (which I often have where I dive), but you just can't get a big sensor in a compact camera. So, that makes for a big and cumbersome rig. Alternatively, you can go the route of a small compact, and use e.g. your dive light for bringing out a little color.

others that say they dont use strobes and just touch up using lightroom. Any input would be appreciated!

"touching up" may be OK for very shallow depths. However, you quickly lose the reds, then the oranges, and then the yellows as you go deeper, and if there isn't any red light in the scene, you can't bring it out in post. So to get the reds and oranges to stand out, you need artificial lighting of some kind. Ambient only can be cool, but you will often get pretty monochromatic images. Or you can go B&W.

Here's a picture of a soft coral (dead man's fingers) taken at 8m depth, and in quite good viz. Ambient only, color balance fixed in LR:

See how the orange doesn't quite "pop". Even in pretty clear water and at very moderate depth, the reds are severely attenuated.

The same species, at 15m in the summer, with typical summer viz. Ambient only, and the color balance pulled as far as possible in LR:

See how there's almost only greens in the image. The reds, oranges and yellows have pretty much disappeared. It's possible to pull it further with some special tricks, or in Photoshop, but you'll have a lot of sensor noise to cope with if you really start pulling hard in the very weak red signal your sensor has been able to capture.

Again the same species, at 17m, but this time with strobe flash:

See how the orange color "pops" in a very different way.

 

[gkrane]

I use a Canon G7x and shoot in manual mode. White Balance is set to auto as I tweak this with lightroom. I also shoot in raw and jpeg but moght just shoot in raw on future trips as I never really use the jpeg images. Topside I just use auto and jpeg as they come out great. For a strobe I use a Sea & Sea ys-D2, and a Sola 2100 light for video. I would like to get another strobe in the future. Without a strobe you just wont get the reds and other filtered out colors in your shots. Lightroom is a fantastic tool for post processing and once you get a workflow process going it becomes very quick. Here is a link I found very useful:

How To Edit Underwater Photography - DIY Photography

 

[oli4]

I never shoot RAW as I'm to lazy to post-edit pictures. Depending on what video I'm making, I alternate between manual white balance and video light. I do play around alot with different (white balance) settings. I do prefer my little point and shoot (canon G12 and Nikon CoolPix7100) above my Canon DSLR. So much easier to use, especially for manual white balance.

 

[Storker]

I'm to lazy to post-edit pictures.

That's the beauty of using Lightroom. It's both an image management system and a pretty powerful post-processing tool. I import and keyword-tag all my pictures in LR anyway, to be able to stay on top of an ever-increasing amount of pictures. Some pics are hardly - if at all - post-processed (although I very often crop a little and usually have to straighten the horizon of landscape pictures), others go through several iterations of heavy PP'ing, while most of my pics fall somewhere between those two extremes. It's all up to the user to decide how much work they want to put into PP'ing. And the best of all is that there's no difference handling JPEGs and handling raw files. LR develops the raw file rather automagically, and if you don't want to do anything, it's going to look pretty much like the JPEG.