A question about white balance for any E-M10 MarkII users/owners.

[Karloss]

I currently own the minipen and was told/taught by a renowned photographer in Roatan that in order to set the manual white balance on it I had to change the ISO to fool or trick the camera into working. This method has gotten really old. My question is... does the E-M10 mkII also need to be tricked in such a way or will the manual white balance set in any ISO? I ask because I thought he mentioned that it did, however I don't trust my memory. If it is easier to set the manual white balance I may be getting a new rig.Thank you.

 

[PHIL RUDIN]

I have been using interchangeable lens Olympus cameras since the E-1 was released. Olympus has excellent auto white balance and the EM10 II should work well set to auto white balance. I have never used manual W/B only tweeting W/B in LightRoom. My observations are based on shooting stills. If you are a video shooter the situation changes.

 

[Reefwalker]

Hi Karloss
The OMD-EM10 MkII is no different than any of the other PEN Lites, PEN Minis or OMD cameras, They all have a difficult time setting white balance manually.
Phil's statement that Olympus has excellent auto white balance needs qualifying a little more = Olympus has excellent auto white balance when used with strobe lighting or in shallow bright waters, it has crap auto white balance when used in anything over 15 meters in natural light. The only way to set white balance to be anywhere near correct is to use the manual method with a slate: Setting White Balance on PEN & OMD - How to

 

[Karloss]

Hi Karloss
The OMD-EM10 MkII is no different than any of the other PEN Lites, PEN Minis or OMD cameras, They all have a difficult time setting white balance manually.
Phil's statement that Olympus has excellent auto white balance needs qualifying a little more = Olympus has excellent auto white balance when used with strobe lighting or in shallow bright waters, it has crap auto white balance when used in anything over 15 meters in natural light. The only way to set white balance to be anywhere near correct is to use the manual method with a slate: Setting White Balance on PEN & OMD - How to

Yeah, I know. I have used the auto and everything comes out green. I am tired of changing the ISO to the max in an effort to capture a manual white balance and then, if it works, changing the ISO back to a more usable level like 200. It has gotten to where it won't capture a manual white balance under the water however as soon as I get topside and back to the room it will capture more times than not. I don't know????

 

[PHIL RUDIN]

I think your expectations are a bit to high for any camera underwater. At around 30 meters about the only color left is green or blue and it acts like a filter the greater the distance from the subject. If you used your camera in auto W/B above water and put a red or blue filter over the front of the lens the results would be much the same.

All photos below 30 meters.

First two photos are with the Olympus E-M1 and 8mm fisheye. The first is unaltered and the second I used the W/B tool in Lightroom on a white clump on the line near the edge of the photo. While the foreground W/B is a bit better it does very little to alter the main subject of the photo.

The second two photos are with the Sony A7R II and Canon 8-15mm fisheye zoom at 15mm to fill the frame. I did the same thing with these two photos using the W/B tool on the second photo in photoshop placed on the the white spot in the foreground sandy area. Not apples to apples but you can see a much more dramatic change (not for the good) with the Sony auto W/B.

All photos using auto W/B in camera and in the Philippines.

To me the Olympus auto W/B for stills below 20 meters or so is quite good and well balanced when using strobes which are only lighting the foreground in W/A photography.

 

[Tippytoes12]

I got used to using manual WB on my aging canon s110. The attached is from Monad shoal at 30 mts without a strobe , the only thigh I do is enhance photos on the ipad. These photos are nowhere as good as many others , but within just 900 Grammies of camera great I'm happy with them !

 

[Chris Ross]

It sounds odd that you need to play with ISO. I suspect that would be to allow the camera to get a correct exposure as if it is under or over exposed accuracy of the WB can be a problem. I think you just need to get the exposure correct, In manual just reduce SS until the exposure error goes to zero while pointed at your white slate.

I tried on my EM-5 II . the EM-10 II should be fairly similar. On that assign One touch WB to a function button, then hold that button while taking a picture. A list comes up to assign that WB to a number.... unless you want to store a bunch of different WB setting just press OK to assign to one. It will override each time you re-do the WB.

I then found this was automatically selected as the WB setting when I checked and it stayed assigned when I switched modes between M, S , A modes.

You would probably want to select a button you can press easily on your housing while pressing the shutter button as you need hold it down while taking an exposure.

Try doing it on land a few times first. It would be neat if it stayed primed for 10 seconds or something waiting for you to take the image as using both hands could get awkward UW. I found I can take an image while thumbing Fn-1 button on the EM-5 II Nauticam housing. Just try each button with the shutter button to see what works best.

On the subject of post correction of errors in WB, I generally adjust colour temperature and green magenta a bit in the Raw converter, Then I don't touch any colour temperature correction in photoshop. Just open a levels layer and in each of the R, G, B channels adjust the white and black point sliders to come up against the histogram. Have a look and find tune a little to taste and you're done, this can generally pull red into the exposure, but occasionally you'll get a file that won't play. In this system the Red channel adjusts Red/Cyan, Green: Green/Magenta and blue: Blue/Yellow