Without a strobe

[Tassie_Rohan]

Seriously, I don't use magic filters or white balance for non-strobe photos but have had great success in the past with the colour-correcting Photoshop filter described here to remove blues.

Now days I use a strobe and less extreme manual Photoshop adjustments to bring the colours out, and one day I'll try manually setting white balance.

Cheers,
Rohan.

 

[Gilligan]

The most important thing to do when shooting underwater w/o a strobe is to use manual (custom) white balance and to use the manual mode.

I personally don't use filters. I don't believe they are necessary. The "underwater" setting on the Canon cameras is not adequate as it cannot be an all encompassing setting. Calibrate your white balance off a white dive slate or the like at the depth you are taking photos. If the vis and/or ambient light changes at different depths then re-calibrate your white balance. Start with the lowest ISO setting and a shutter speed not slower than 1/60 or moving objects will likely blur. If you cannot get enough light in the photo, even at the largest lens opening, then up the ISO to 100 or 200. The higher the ISO the more likely you are to increase digital noise especially at ISO 400.

Post process your photos in PS or the like. Helicon Filter is great for cleaning up digital noise and there is a free download version that works well.

The link that Tassie_Rohan posted is on my PT-010 site. It works well to clean up "blue" photos taken in the "auto' white balance mode. That process is mainly for cameras that do not have manual white balance. You will get much better results calibtrating your white balance.

 

[AUTiger]

I didn't have a strobe for my first year with my camera. I still got some great photos. The UR PRo or Magic Filters are great for color correction in shallow water. The internal flash will do pretty decently for macro.

Using the internal flash:

Natural light with a UR Pro filter:

Natural light with some photoshop:

 

[kapula]

I've never used a strobe - yet. So all my pics are taken without one. Feel free to browse those threads I've sent any pics or check some older pics in my signature You can always check those last thailand trip pics too which are here

 

[torrey]

Here's a link to the pics I was talking about on the Magic-filters.com website.
http://www.magic-filters.com/autoindex.html

They were shot at 40ft. or less with no strobe.

I wish I would have had one of those magic filters when I was using my SP-350 to take video this past weekend. I think I'll put it on my Christmas list.

 

[Fastmarc]

If you mean by 'no strobe', using the camera's internal flash as well as no flash at all, have a look here at my pictures which were done using internal flash and none at all.
Your camera should produce better results when you learn how to.

 

[gregorio]

All the pic of my phillipine blogs are without external strobe, cannon or oly PnS, photoshoped or not.

 

[the_cat_keeper]

Hi, Rcagar,

I didn't have a strobe initially and since I didn't quite figure out white balance then, most of my photos that were taken at deeper depth didn't turn out. Also, in those days I had a Canon S1 which didn't do much for macro/ close-up shots, a lot of my photos had a shadow that covered the bottom 1/3 of the photos. I had to crop them; with a 3.1 MP camera, you can expect what kind of photos I've got.

I still have that particular album posted on scubaboard. Feel free to browse: http://www.scubaboard.com/gallery/showgallery.php/cat/636 :blush: I've kept it there just so I know how far I'd gone since then.

p.s. very little was done (or could be done with my limited skills) on Photoshop, except cropping.