White balancing with Strobes and Video Lights

[Dunx]

I have an S95 with Ike housing and W-20 lens, as well a Sola1200 - I just got back from my first trip with it and actually ended up shooting a lot of stills, so now I'm thinking of adding a strobe (either YS-01 or Inon S2000) to my setup and switching between still and video but I have a white balancing question.
I should just set it to "daylight" whenever I'm using either the video light or a strobe, and manual white balance on a slate at depth if I'm doing wider stuff that won't get hit by either light...correct? My understanding is that both the Sola as well as any strobe will pump out daylight tempterature, so if I were to manually white balance at depth, then use the light or strobe, it will result in a redder tone.
I went to film school years ago ( so I understand all the concepts of white balancing, I'm just trying to figure it out in a practical diving sense.
SO
Manual WB at depth when shooting stills/video with NO light
Daylight WB at depth when shooting with either video or strobe light

sound about right to you guys?

here's some pics from my trip to the Bay of Pigs MobileMe Gallery - you can see the redness on some of the reef shots and the wreck later in the series - this is the Sola lighting without re-setting my WB to daylight...I'm assuming

any feedback / thoughts are appreciated

 

[bvanant]

Sounds OK but for any stills any depth, I would shoot in raw and worry about WB later. I haven't shot the S95 in video mode, but for traditional video if you are using lights then daylight is OK.
Bill

 

[flareside]

WB mode doesn't matter when using a strobe as the camera automatically overrides it into the flash WB mode.

 

[Quero]

What I do when I'm taking wide angle shots is to try to get a nice blue background, so rather than doing any white balancing I watch the light meter and adjust the shutter speed so that I get an exposure of -1.7 to -2.0. When I can, I still fire the strobe so that I get some color in one of the lower corners, like a sponge or a fan coral.

If you're going to set it to one of the automatic scene/exposure/temperature settings, use "cloudy" rather than "daylight." "Cloudy" is more like the conditions we have underwater. However, flareside is correct--it won't matter which of the scene/exposure/temperature modes you choose when you use the strobe because the strobe will override the setting anyway.

 

[Dunx]

ah, ok, thanks for the tips. Interesting to know that when using onboard flash (to trigger a strobe) it color balances properly.
I guess what I'm trying to determine now is: if I'm shooting video, i'll probably custom white balance, but then when I switch over to take a still image, I thought I would have to set my white balance to be daylight (and when I say daylight, i mean the color temp, as opposed to tungsten). But are you guys saying that no matter what kind of custom white balance I've set, that it will automatically color it properly when i turn flash "on"?

 

[Bubbletrubble]

ah, ok, thanks for the tips. Interesting to know that when using onboard flash (to trigger a strobe) it color balances properly.
I guess what I'm trying to determine now is: if I'm shooting video, i'll probably custom white balance, but then when I switch over to take a still image, I thought I would have to set my white balance to be daylight (and when I say daylight, i mean the color temp, as opposed to tungsten). But are you guys saying that no matter what kind of custom white balance I've set, that it will automatically color it properly when i turn flash "on"?

Yes, so long as you are using a setting that uses auto-exposure metering.

If you want more manual control of exposure, your S95 has a "manual" setting in which the user specifies the desired aperture, shutter speed, and ISO.

 

[Dunx]

ah...interesting

so, manual mode won't "auto-white-balance" even if the flash is on, unlike Tv and Av modes....so if i wanted to use manual mode when switching from video to stills, i'd just have to reset my white balance to be "daylight" temp.

planning on getting the Inon S2000 for a Thailand/Mozambique trip in March...seems like a great compact strobe.

thanks again for the info!!

 

[flareside]

I was doing a little testing this morning and it appears I spoke too soon. On my S90, flash did not overrule manual WB (when using an auto mode). It overruled every other mode including underwater but not manual WB. And when I set manual WB to accommodate the flash, non-flash shots were off. So WB settings are just something you are going to have to have worked out in advance. Shifting from manual WB for nonflash shots to flash WB is fairly simple however and underwater you won't be changing between the two very often.