Why my images appear bluish and do underwater mode helps?

[royneoky]

Hi, I’m Roy. I'm new to underwater photography and really love it yet my experience was rather bad as all my pictures took, appear bluish or greenish and sometimes blur yet at times the colors was great and at times even the object was colorful but it appears only blue or green.

Recently I bought a Canon G11 for my underwater shooting, previously during shooting I used my friend Canon Cam and was using the underwater mode (auto) provided by Canon. I owned a Nikon D90 too and have bits of knowledge on shutter speed, aperture or ISO, appreciate if you would advice me on what should be done in order to get a better image.

Example what mode will be better during underwater shooting and hopefully to capture the color of the object, just a short brief will be greatly appreciated.

By the way using underwater mode for Canon G11 is for what purpose? What are the different using that mode?


Thanks!

 

[Dirty-Dog]

As you go deeper in the water, you lose more color. Reds and Yellows go first, resulting in the blue/green colors of your pictures.

You can fix this in several ways. You can do macro photography, using your built in flash. Yu can use a red filter. Or you can get some strobes.

There's no doubt that buying some strobes is the best solution. Since light cannot penetrate to the depths you're diving, you bring your own light. It's also the most expensive. I use a red filter. It works well, thought admittedly not as well as strobes, and it's a fraction of the cost. I've posted pictures and videos in other threads, and while I am far from being one of the pros, they're not bad at all.

 

[tbone1004]

The underwater mode basically does what photoshop does. It changes the white balance to enhance the reds and cut down the blues. It's meant for underwater for a reason. Most of the time, Photoshop can fix the color balance, but that get's limited after about 30 feet or so depending on the visibility.
Strobes are the only real way to go to get real color correction though...

 

[PatW]

The thing to do is shoot in RAW. RAW allows you to fool with the white balance in post processing. However, under 15', which is pretty shallow, the reds are gone and no amount of white balance will bring them back. The deeper you go, the bluer it gets. Beyond something like 50', the only colors are blue and green. The software that comes with your camera has a nice RAW editor that can adjust white balance and a fair number of other things. Tweak the photo, save it to JPEG (or you other favored editing format) and finish editing in whatever you use.

There are a number of sites that talk about these things like Underwater Photography Techniques

Also, if I recall, the Ikelite site has a discussion on the settings to use on the Canon G11 camera.

Good luck to you.

That is why underwater photographers use strobes. The strobes replace the colors. The problem is that strobes have short ranges. The light has to go from the strobe to the target and back again. So to get red, you have to be within about 5' or less from your target.

That is why underwater photography is dominated by wide angle and macro. The closer you get the better.

I have the G11. I think shooting in manual seems to work the best. I usually put the F stop at 5.5 or so. Then I adjust the exposure with the shutter speed. I shoot ISO at 100. I use a strobe and adjust that manually if TTL does not work well. It is generally better to underexpose a bit then overexpose. Another thing, once you get a focus lock on a fish, the shutter has very little lag. If you can lock on and keep it locked, you can follow the fish around until it strikes a decent pose.

 

[Md Spear]

try manual w/ iso 800 . no stobe needed . can't bring in the reds , but 800 in the deep can be way better than auto.

 

[Nylorac]

As you go deeper in the water, you lose more color. Reds and Yellows go first, resulting in the blue/green colors of your pictures.

You can fix this in several ways. You can do macro photography, using your built in flash. Yu can use a red filter. Or you can get some strobes.

There's no doubt that buying some strobes is the best solution. Since light cannot penetrate to the depths you're diving, you bring your own light. It's also the most expensive. I use a red filter. It works well, thought admittedly not as well as strobes, and it's a fraction of the cost. I've posted pictures and videos in other threads, and while I am far from being one of the pros, they're not bad at all.

How do you get red filter? I am tired of seeing blue!

 

[Nemrod]

How do you get red filter? I am tired of seeing blue!

You cannot put back that which was never there, as has been explained, red is the first part of the visible spectrum to be lost, by the time you are 30 feet or so the remaining light is essentially blue/green. A "red" filter only works up shallow where there is still some red spectrum, it works by holding back, selectively filtering out blue/green.

You get colorful photos by using an external strobe at a distance no more than four feet combined with a wide angle lens so you can stay close and still cover the scene. Or just do macro like most do, you will still need a strobe however some people have decent macro luck with the camera's built in strobe.

N

 

[pjhansman]

 

[Michel Braunstein]

Hello Roy,

Well, as some people ehave already explained, colors are disappearing when going down..

You have a couple of solutions, either use an external flash, the internal flash won't give you the best result and will create backscatters (except for macro with no blue water in the background).

Another solution would be to add a magig filter for point and shoot available in specialized shops or here: M A G I C - F I L T E R S
There give the best result for the cheapest price.

Another way would be to choose to shoot only blue water. No flash at all. SEe everything as it is without adding any light. Of course, in that case you will have to choose only specific subjects like wrecks, hammerheads shoals, whales, whale sharks, animals silouettes (sharks, mantas...). It's a defferent kind of UW photography but it's also very cool. Stephen Wong and Takako Uno have published a wonderful book with only uw natural light images.

Of course, you should configure your camera in manual and with the correct white balance. I'd suggest F8 and 1/60 for the begining.

See the following pics all taken without flash...

Cheers,

Michel

 

[Limoges Diver]

The underwater mode basically does what photoshop does. It changes the white balance to enhance the reds and cut down the blues. It's meant for underwater for a reason. Most of the time, Photoshop can fix the color balance, but that get's limited after about 30 feet or so depending on the visibility.
Strobes are the only real way to go to get real color correction though...

I find that colour balancing is not the true solution, because it doesn't get as much real colour as with channel mixing in Photoshop.
The process is quite simple once you get the hang of it:
1) adjust blue and green levels; 2) mix the channels to the red channel: add green, and remove blue. 3) adjust red level with the mid-point adjustment slider; 4)adjust that saturation of the various colours (red, green, blue, yellow, cyan and magenta), then set that adjustment layer to "multiply" and then adjust the opacity to a level that looks best. Her is the result of that process on a picture I took in Cozumel at about 40 feet depth, on an overcast day:

Here is that process done to one of the images above: