Does a flash help remove the green/blue?

[cayal]

Let's say your diving at 20m and the colour around you is pretty much a deep green or blue for whatever reason taking any photo of any coral or marine animal is just them being green\blue with none of their colour.

It happens, naturally.

Would a flash/strobe help remove the green/blue and get the more natural colours of the coral/animal?

 

[fisheater]

Yes. It's white light. However, it will only extend to the limits of the brightness of the strobe.


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[cayal]

Yes. It's white light. However, it will only extend to the limits of the brightness of the strobe.


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Sweet, thank you.

 

[TSandM]

As you know, water absorbs light, and the reds and yellows are the first to go. If you can get white light to the subject -- AND back to the camera -- in a short enough distance that the red wavelengths aren't absorbed, you will see the reds, whether the light came from the sun or from your strobe. But it's important to realize that the absorption distance is strobe to subject to lens, so you really can't be very far at all from your target and still keep the colors.

 

[farsidefan1]

All my early photos have that green caste to them. To get that nice deep blue I started adjusting the white balance for whatever depth I'm at. I was surprised that the nice reds etc have to be very close to the strobe, forget about 10 or 15 feet. White light from strobes are great at maybe 3-4 feet tops. At least that is my single strobe. In bright sunlight and shallow, well that is nirvana.

 

[vladimir]

Just to emphasize what has already been said, the strobe isn't removing blue, or green, it's adding red. You can adjust the color cast in post-processing (Photoshop, etc.) quite easily, as well.

 

[KeithG]

Post processing color adjustment has its limitations. You can use it to alter colors, you can not use it to restore colors that have been lost.

My wetsuit is red and black. At depth it appears all black. If you take a non flash picture it is still all black. You can post process and turn the black to red. Then I will have a red wetsuit, not a red and black wetsuit.

So a flash is required if you really want to get true colors.

 

[vladimir]

Yes. The definition of a "color cast" is a tint which affects the whole image evenly. Photoshop has no way of capturing data that your camera didn't. So, yes, if you want the reds, you need the strobe(s), but if you want to eliminate a bluish color cast (as the original poster asked), you can do it in Photoshop. As has been suggested, setting white balance underwater can help with that as well.

 

[Tigerman]

Post processing color adjustment has its limitations. You can use it to alter colors, you can not use it to restore colors that have been lost.

My wetsuit is red and black. At depth it appears all black. If you take a non flash picture it is still all black. You can post process and turn the black to red. Then I will have a red wetsuit, not a red and black wetsuit.

So a flash is required if you really want to get true colors.

Not entirely true.
You CAN infact use post porcessing to pull out more red and leave all other colors as they where, but you do need to have SOME red to start with for it to work. Also if you have the raw data files you will have a lot more data to work with and youll be able to pull even more out of the pictures than you would from the jpegs...
Any advanced color adjustments will take time though, so a strobe is of course a better and easier way to get more color, but if you start using all the features various editing software have, you can make your pictures a LOT better as long as you have the patience..

 

[bvanant]

To the OP:
This discussion reinforces the concept of Guide Number. The GN of a strobe describes its power
GN = Distance x F stop
For a typical strobe with a GN of say 12 (meters underwater, like an Inon Z240) this means if you want to shoot at f:16 for large depth of field you need to be 12/16 meter or about 2 and a half feet away at full strobe power. So inside of 5 feet you will get good color and OK exposure, perfect exposure is at 2.5 feet or so. Inside that distance all of your pics should show "real color" whatever that is.
BVA