Do you need a red filter?

[sroot17]

I've just returned from my first few dives with a camera. I, like many other amateur photographers went out and bought a housing for my land based canon elf. As you could imagine my first set of pictures came out extremely blue, loosing a lot of the color anywhere deeper than 25 feet. I was shooting in the Caribbean anywhere between 25 and 65 feet. I was told by the DM that getting a red filter would correct this, also I noticed others onboard with filters on their cameras.

Is a red filter necessary and if so when do you use it? Can they be put on underwater? Can the blue be corrected using the ISO and white balance settings instead? Or, should you set the ISO high and the white balance in addition to using a red filter or is that going to be too much correction?

 

[HowardE]

Don't set the ISO high. It will just add "noise" to your photos.

You CAN use a filter to correct this AND manual WB.

The best solution for proper color underwater though is a strobe or 2.

 

[DesertEagle]

Using the camera only, you can take some nice macro photos. But you will have to get very close, less than 1 ft. Reef scenics are okay to about 15 feet. Even then, you should manually change the white balance. It makes a big difference.

Magic Filters make a huge difference. There's a newer one designed for compact cameras. It goes inside the housing, in front of the lens. With your Elf, just use auto white balance. You may need to set the exposure compnesation to -1/3 or -2/3. These filters are used for reef shots. They are not meant for macro.
www.magic-filters.com

Here are a couple of my photos taken with an Olympus SP-310 and a Sea & Sea wide angle lens. No strobe was used.