TG-6 White Balance issues

[DivingBearPhotos]

Hello!

I've been shooting with the TG6 for a while now and it's great for macro, but I can't seem to get the white balance right. Every time I use a white slate to set a custom WB the background and most of the image becomes very grey, is there another way y'all would suggest setting WB or should I just edit it in post?

I usually shoot in CA kelp forests, if that helps

Attached is a pic of a giant sea bass I think shows the issue, it's just a harsher WB than I'm looking for

 

[Johnboy70_99]

I am interested in the answer as well. The best colors I got from my tg6 was when it was brand new, before I started “messing with it”. I was taught to hire balance on my hand at depth, and I have also tried the auto and various manual fixed underwater settings. Using the built in flash auto gives mixed results.

I do get decent results when I use my backscatter mf2 for macro, but so far other settings don’t give me as good results as when the camera was brand new. I am also shooting raw as well as jpeg and I am able to color correct some things afterwards using dive+ but I feel like the camera itself would do better if I was using it correctly.

 

[Edward3c]

Using flash undermines any white setting. I find correcting with software is the best option. Even after 4 years and thousands of shots.

 

[tursiops]

I am interested in the answer as well. The best colors I got from my tg6 was when it was brand new, before I started “messing with it”. I was taught to hire balance on my hand at depth, and I have also tried the auto and various manual fixed underwater settings. Using the built in flash auto gives mixed results.

I do get decent results when I use my backscatter mf2 for macro, but so far other settings don’t give me as good results as when the camera was brand new. I am also shooting raw as well as jpeg and I am able to color correct some things afterwards using dive+ but I feel like the camera itself would do better if I was using it correctly.

Using flash undermines any white setting. I find correcting with software is the best option. Even after 4 years and thousands of shots.

You either WB or use flash, not both at the same time. WB assumes ambient light.
However, many try using flash at camera-subject distances that are too large, and the flash adds no light to the picture. You may have a flash going off, but it is an ambient light picture, and WB is useful.

 

[BoltSnap]

You either WB or use flash, not both at the same time. WB assumes ambient light.

Are you talking from tg6 perspective or UW cameras in general here?

 

[bubblemonkey2]

most of the image becomes very grey
I usually shoot in CA kelp forests

Your photo looks accurate. It's not the camera's white balance calibration that is off, it's the nature of the conditions of your dive site that day.

Also the small sensor on the TG is amazing but it has its limits for light sensitivity. But even a top of the line $10,000+ camera setup is not going to look wildly different from what you got.

It's just naturally quite dark, muted and hazy in your/our waters, like ≤5% of the light is still there, and very little of the spectrum. I wouldn't expect much from any camera in those conditions on a wide shot, unless you are doing flashed macro/wide. But backscatter will still be a huge issue. You need clean water for that.

Not that much light actually makes it past the first metre or so of seawater, in anything but the most plankton-depleted waters. The more competitive and advanced freefloating microalgae of the Pacific Coasts (e.g. diatoms) are very good at absorbing photons across most of the spectrum, for similar reasons many kelps appear very dark green and/or brown.

You can still restore an 'ocean colors' look and/or increase saturation, contrasts etc by making adjustments on your .ORF RAW files on the computer. Darktable is a nice app for that, there are YouTube videos on how to do it.

darktable

darktable is an open source photography workflow application and raw developer

www.darktable.org

 

[BoltSnap]

Darktable is a nice app for that, there are YouTube videos on how to do it.

Is this a LR replacement or works with LR?

 

[bubblemonkey2]

Darktable is all that I use for RAW editing and exports. But it can be some work to reproduce what the TG firmware is doing when it processes its raw into JPGs. To have RAW ORFs saved on the SD card, of course you have to go into the camera settings and enable that.

You could probably also use OM Workspace, the software meant to pair with Olympus/OM cameras including the TG series. If you go that route, it might allow you to apply and cycle through all of the built-in post processing presets that it uses, i.e. 'natural,' 'vivid,' etc.

I guess Lightroom's sliders and masks are a bit more user friendly, and there are 'AI' features, which I guess it partly what you pay for. "Industry standard" or something $$$

 

[mi000ke]

I shoot in RAW and use OM Workspace to set the WB. I usually use the grey point specification "eyedropper" and click on something in the photo that is close to white/grey. Works well most of the time.