The HDR HC9 arrived - white balance question.

[Crimson Ghost]

I started another thread when I found my HC7 died and finding a camera for my Amphibico housing was proving an issue – many thanks to those who helped us !

I keep reading about “adjusting the white balance” what exactly is that and what does it do? Is this something I should learn about?

 

[diversteve]

Not in your housing, you can't adjust it.

Basically for those that can, MWB is a process of "telling" the camera what's white at depth so it can adjust colors accordingly to compensate mostly for the excessive "blues" found at different depths or conditions. With a camera/housing that can do it, you push the MWB control while filling the screen with something white so the camera can adjust itself. Sand, sun, white Apollo fins, dive slates all are options.

Housings that can do this are Ikelite, Ocean Images, Gates and the L&M BLueFin (there's probably others) They all provide a manual control to press the LCD touch screen. You can re-assign the menus on Sony cameras to make the MWB screen a default option when housed for easier access.

Your HC7/9's Auto White Balance continuously as does mine, I've been pleased with the results generally. Deep low-light conditions do have excessive blue saturation but I don't have lights.

I've had mixed results powering the camera off/on at various depths as from what I've read, Sony cameras white balance on startup. I may be just kidding myself that it does anything however.

I did try once powering on my camera while holding a white Expodisc in front of my port, after a couple of days of experimentation, I re-sold the Expodisc - it just didn't seem to be any better.

If you're reading in the other post about MWB with an EVO and A1U, they're able to do that since the camera has a MWB assignable button. Amphibico provides a manual control to push it as an option on an EVO. Your HC9 doesn't have one.

How's the new toy?

 

[drbill]

My attempts to white balance my HC-7 in a Top Dawg housing failed with every method. My housing does not have a MWB option and the way the camera is set up to do MWB from the LCD screen seems awfully stupid to me. I've tried powering up the camera at depth with a white slate in front of it, then doing the same without the slate and my aging eyes can see no difference. I guess it is time to spend the "big bucks."

 

[Crimson Ghost]

Thanks guys - I appreciate the feed back,...I am not ready for the "big bucks" investment yet so I'll also try the on off at depth and see if my aging eyes can see a difference.

Turns out we forgot to renew my daughters passport ( its a problem, she's a minor and its needed so we may end up leaving both kids home.....I am nervous to leave them with gandma - not wure what to do yet)

 

[Diverking]

Don't waste your time trying to MWB your HC7/9: the camera just won't do it underwater (yes, tried everything and many others did too with different housings).

My advice is use a filter and set the WB to outdoor, then postedit, but don't expect too much in terms of accurate colors.

 

[Jon Shaw]

The key to white balancing underwater is to do it in small increments from surface, I used to own an Hc1 and could get it to white balance down to around 10m in average visibility.
Make sure that you zoom all the way and push the image out of focus and that can sometimes help.
Another way can be to white balance on the sun, again zoom in and pull the image out of focus.

The advantage is that when you are deeper you can use the red filter and the image will still look good, Once you get down past 25m though I would pull the filter off as this will cut out too much light.
Also remember when you use lights the image will go very red due to you adding red light.

The advantage of white balancing underwater is that you don't need to do as much colour correction in post which with HDV and the 4:2:0 colour space can really degrade the image.

 

[bdombrowski]

I have had an HC7 in a USVH housing for over two years. No manual WB underwater, but there is a work around. I lock the WB to a manual setting at the surface. Either daylight or some white reference. Then, underwater I use a white ref slate that I shoot at a similar distance and lightning conditions as my subject. Shoot a few second of this ref before I start a new scene and new depth, distance or lighting conditions. Then use this as a white ref in post. I use Adobe Premiere Pro CS4 and the color correction tools it has.

The key is to lock the WB on the HC7 or HC9 and NOT use the auto WB. The auto WB is impossible to work with when trying to correct color at post since it is dynamically changing.

 

[LouCap]

White balancing the camera is actually telling it what "color temperature" of light you're using. Day light is 5600 degrees Kelvin, while tungsten studio lights are 3200 degrees kelvin, and there are many variations in between.

As we all know, we loose colors in the order ROYGBV as we descend because of diminishing light. So, if you white balance without lights alone is not going to make anything look better. But, white balance WITH lights and you've got a another story. It's the lack of light that makes everything look so washed out and blue.

 

[Jon Shaw]

Agree never used AWB... nightmare in post.
If you can get it to WB even at say 3m the images deeper will look better. Obviously though if you turn your lights on then the image will go red and you will need to adjust again.

 

[Scubasteve1950]

So if you MWB do you still use the red filter? How about if you are using a light?