Bogus White Balance Setting

I just got back from two weeks in Kona, with my new D70 and Ikelite housing. Unfortunately, I came down with a cold after five days of diving, but even more frustrating was that I couldn't get a good white balance setting from the camera.

My photographic background is with film, as a fine art wannabe. I've never liked flash, so for now, I'm trying to do underwater photography with available light.

On my first dive with the camera I tried shooting with the white balance set to Auto, to see what it would do. The result was blue-green: a touch of red, and roughly equal amounts of green and blue. Not enough red to do much with, though.

On my second dive, after descending to about forty feet, I set the white balance to "Preset," held the WB button, showed the camera a white card, and pressed the shutter. I didn't look to see whether it thought it had gotten the information it needed, but I went ahead and took a bunch of shots. Surprise, they were blue: no red, less green than the previous set, and good, solid blue.

On my next dive with the camera I tried to set the white balance again, but again didn't check for the "Good" indicator. The pictures were blue again. That was my last try.

When I've done it on land I've had no problem getting a usable "Preset" white balance, so I know I'm capable of doing it right. Am I overlooking something fundamental?

If you don't like the results with the manual WB, shoot in raw then correct your white balance in Photoshop.

Not clear if your question is 1. When underwater is the Manual WB working? or 2. Are these typical results when you shoot natural light? I have a D100 so can't really help you with "is the WB working question".

Unless you are shooting in very clear, very bright and shallow water you are not going to get much "red" in your photos. Some professional photographers are starting to play with filters not unlike what video shooters have been using. Here is a link that covers this subject: http://wetpixel.com/i.php/full/ur-pro-shallow-water-filter-review/

Hope this helps

hermosadive:

If you don't like the results with the manual WB, shoot in raw then correct your white balance in Photoshop.

Click to expand...

Raw doesn't affect the amount of red. There's not enough of it to do anything useful with Auto white balance.

mjh:

Not clear if your question is 1. When underwater is the Manual WB working? or 2. Are these typical results when you shoot natural light? I have a D100 so can't really help you with "is the WB working question".

Click to expand...

Yeah, I realized after I posted that I hadn't really asked anything clear. Partly I was hoping that someone would answer 1) with "A common mistake is to ..." and that the "..." part would be something I'd left out.

After I posted I figured out what probably happened: that blue balance setting was left over from previous experiments, and both times when I tried to set the white balance I did something wrong, and didn't change it.

Unless you are shooting in very clear, very bright and shallow water you are not going to get much "red" in your photos. Some professional photographers are starting to play with filters not unlike what video shooters have been using. Here is a link that covers this subject: http://wetpixel.com/i.php/full/ur-pro-shallow-water-filter-review/

Hope this helps

Click to expand...

Not really. <g> I'm trying to understand what's happening, so adding other ways to do it just adds to the confusion. So let's see if I've got the basics right.

The underlying problem is that there's not much red in the incident light. The recorded image (with Auto white balance) has a very short range of values from minimum red to maximum red, and a much larger range for blue and green, so if you try to adjust the color with post-processing you end up with big jumps in the red instead of smooth tone variations. So you have to get the red in the original image more in line with the blue and green, which you can do electronically with white balance, or optically with a red filter, or both (which is what that review describes -- the filter gets it close enough that the auto white balance can finish the job).

pete340:

So you have to get the red in the original image more in line with the blue and green, which you can do electronically with white balance

Click to expand...

No you can't....

First of all, there is no replacing light wavelengths that don't exist. No amount of electronic calibration of selective filtration can do this. When red is gone, its gone.

You can use a filter to reduce the amount of blue & green light that the sensor records, reducing the disparity between red and other colors, but only a strobe or video lights will add red back...

Dr. Alexander Mustard has engineered a new filter that is getting lots of attention. http://www.magic-filters.com/ I don't know how it works, but it is getting results that are intriguing. They appear quite over-saturated to me, but that might be the result of the color balancing on the editing side of things too...

Ryan:

No you can't....

First of all, there is no replacing light wavelengths that don't exist. No amount of electronic calibration of selective filtration can do this. When red is gone, its gone.

Click to expand...

That's true.

You can use a filter to reduce the amount of blue & green light that the sensor records, reducing the disparity between red and other colors, but only a strobe or video lights will add red back...

Click to expand...

Again true. But it skips the important part: are you saying that the white balance can't reduce blue and green in the same way that the filter would?

pete340:

That's true.



Again true. But it skips the important part: are you saying that the white balance can't reduce blue and green in the same way that the filter would?

Click to expand...

In my experience, no it can't.