TG 4 white balance - suggestions?

[salth2owannabe]

I got my wife a TG 4 and getting decent photos has been a bit of a struggle. If someone could give a walk through on setting the white balance properly it would be greatly appreciated. We went with the point and shoot to keep size down with the intention that photos would be secondary to the dive. If we need to go with a small strobe I guess that is also an option. Any other suggestions would be great.
Thanks

 

[salth2owannabe]

The reason I ask is that in doing some searching regarding the issue it appears to be a common problem but I have yet to see a good solution. When setting the white balance with the flash off it will give an error message depending on the type/size of the white object being used. The underwater white balance setting in the camera doesn't appear to be adequate, at least in and of itself. I shoot video and am pretty camera challenged when it comes to anything other than point it and push the button. I've seen posts from folks here who have been using the TG 4 with pretty good success. Is it raw and post production or have they figured out pre-edit solutions that would be beneficial. Thanks

 

[Chris Ross]

If you are doing stills, shooting raw is the best solution I have found, then learning how to colour balance using a levels adjustment. This gives an outline:

Using Levels in Photoshop to Image Correct Color and Contrast

basically all you are doing is pulling in the end points to where the bump of the curve starts for each of the reg green and blue channels.. Takes a few seconds once you get used to it.

The problem with the white balance seems to be getting enough light. What settings are you using? I would think Av and f2.0 would be best to use when setting white balance, maybe even dial in some positive exposure comp to drop shutter speed. You are only doing this to get enough light for the WB and switch back to your regular settings afterwards, but make sure it follows you if you change modes.

 

[al248005]

I shoot in RAW and manually set the WB using someones tank at depth to set it with.