Yes I tried the grey side of the padi slate. It works fine on land underwater it was crap
Using white balance reference cards
- Thread starter EL Pistoffo
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Could you explain the reasons for this conclusion?
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Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk
OP
EL Pistoffo
Contributor
LOL
How weird that the hand works better than supposed reference cards designed for WB.
I did see a video posted on SB a while back in which they were having the same issue with the cards and found that WB on brown coral worked well. Probably the same thing as using the hand. That makes WB real easy, you can't forget to bring your hands on a dive.
I have then tried some other reference cards and found them to be off
I now ordered what is supposed to be the best white balance card. I will let you know how it does in water
Otherwise power of your hand with the lx7 is good
I now ordered what is supposed to be the best white balance card. I will let you know how it does in water
Otherwise power of your hand with the lx7 is good
OP
EL Pistoffo
Contributor
I don't know how you were able to get such good color on the video. How close do you put your hand to the lens for MWB and did you color correct in post?
Bunaken I used my hand and sand when i could find any. I use iMovie it does not have a great deal of tools for correction, there is the white balance picker and the RGB gains. In general with AVCHD heavily compressed file I try to get the footage as close as I want it to look right away when I shoot
I will check the original bunaken project to see what I did there and let you know
I will check the original bunaken project to see what I did there and let you know
You guys may be forgetting that it is not your depth that is the important thing, but rather the amount of water the light has to go through before it hits your lens. So if you are shooting a (say) fish in front of you at (say) 40 ft, the light is just going through 40 ft to get to the fish, and another (say) 2-3 feet to get from the fish to the lens....and losing red all the way. But 40 versus 42-43 feet is not a big deal, so white-balancing against white or gray at the camera is OK. But if you are at 40 ft and shooting a WA reef scene, then the light is passing through 40 to maybe 100 ft plus of water.....and losing red all the way. So white-balancing at the camera misses the point....you need to correct for more than the 40-feet depth you are at. So correcting to something that is reddish (your hand, some brown coral....) will remove more red from your images than using a white-card. No surprise that "white-balancing" against brown coral works better for reef scenes!
OP
EL Pistoffo
Contributor
I've recently tried MWB with hands, card, sand, coral. It all still comes out too greenish/blueish even at close to subject distances and this was at 30-40 FSW. Only once did I get lucky and MWB with a good colored clip but I have no idea how I did it though my depth my have been shallower (25 FSW).
Today at home a grabbed a couple of colored light bulbs. A blue one, a green one and a white one. I lit them up and got very blue/green tinted lighting. This is my rudimentary way of simulating depth I suppose. Anyways, I tried to MWB on a white card and the camera did its adjustments but the change was marginal, still not good. Looking into regular white light with the resulting WB revealed that the camera had shifted its tint far to the red. It leads me to believe that the camera could not compensate. This little test was of course simplistic and I could be completely wrong.
Today at home a grabbed a couple of colored light bulbs. A blue one, a green one and a white one. I lit them up and got very blue/green tinted lighting. This is my rudimentary way of simulating depth I suppose. Anyways, I tried to MWB on a white card and the camera did its adjustments but the change was marginal, still not good. Looking into regular white light with the resulting WB revealed that the camera had shifted its tint far to the red. It leads me to believe that the camera could not compensate. This little test was of course simplistic and I could be completely wrong.
White balancing is performed against a neutral not white target. What you say is correct if you keep your slate at 1 meter and then shoot a landscape results will differ.
In fact this is the primary reason why I don't bother doing custom white balance anymore and use a filter+auto.
Also you don't shoot really anything that is more than 5-10 meters away so say you are at 20 meters you are looking at a max of 30 meters or 130 feet. Either way at those distances filter and custom white balance do not work as usually in camera custom white balance is limited to 10000K and light temperature is much colder at those depths
White balancing against a brown object gets nothing accurate may just stop the camera issuing an error however that does not mean the white balance calibration is correct at all
ultimately I judge with my eye if I see something in the LCD that makes no sense I take action, if you have a camera with live view this is the best. I do not trust white balance readings or settings of digital cameras in water
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