Shooting Something White For White Balance

[GDHLEWIS]

I have my camera set to 5600k in the white balance menu as thats the rough colour of my main dive torch which is with me 80% of the time. Then before I film anything I just wave a plastic white balance card in front of the camera and hit record so the first second of every clip I film I can white balance in post and just trim the beginning of the clip. Simple and easy system that works for me.

 

[Sure Squintsalot]

Having a white target is super useful when color correcting in post processing. But yeah....you'll have to shoot your fins every time light conditions change. How about putting those new white fins on your dive buddy? That'll make post a lot easier!

 

[BoltSnap]

Just get the white balancing slate I sent up thread and you will be fine. I use and it works well. It is attached to the camera housing with a small retractor.

 

[Jafo19D]

Having a white target is super useful when color correcting in post processing. But yeah....you'll have to shoot your fins every time light conditions change. How about putting those new white fins on your dive buddy? That'll make post a lot easier!

LOL, hell no. Those things are at $299 these days, I’m an only child and very selfish.

 

[lexvil]

I use this, from one of those cheap wrist slates, drill some holes tie some bungee loops and that’s it.

in warm water my palm is white enough that I just use that.

 

[arvin]

Do I set white balance to auto?

Its up to you. It wont affect things much becouse setting that auto tells the camera to assign the white balance value automatically and you will wventually ignore that value but use the one from your grey card shot. But, I would set it to fixed so that I have consistent setting there. The depth will already change things so having 1 less parameter to deal with at post processing would be good.
To set the white balance correctly;
In the post processing, you will first set the whitebalance using the shot you made for your grey card. Then you apply that value to all photos taken at similar conditions/depth.
Whats important here is to shoot raw, otherwise you may not be able to set the white balance good in post processsing. Becouse jog files dont allow that much change during post processing.
If your camera doesnt shoot raw, your best chance is to try getting as close as the correct white balance while under water. Some cameras would allow you to set white balance through a shot. If your camera has that feature, the you can use to set whitebalance while under water. Just enable that setting and shoot your card, filling majority of the frame.

There are a few more details to it as well but you’ll figure it all out once you try with it a few times. It might look a lot of info but its easy once you get it.

 

[Hatul]

What I do is set my GoPro9 to auto white balance, then I shoot a clip with my white fins and video light turned off. When editing in PowerDirector I activate ColorDirector. This has a pen icon that I point to the white fin and tells the software to correct colors so the fin is white. Then I store that as a color preset. I apply this preset to any clips I want to color correct. Some clips taken with video light I find look best without post color correction and some are better with the color correction.

With auto white balance occasional there's a color shift in my video and some are bothered by this. The advantage is that I can take video on the surface, which adds a nice change of scene which you can't do with fixed white balance.

I still have not figured out which is better Flat or GoPro Color.

 

[passeparici]

@Hatul Flat if you do some post processing. And yes as I said in another thread, change in colors with the auto white balance bothers me But it could be only me...