My Bonaire video, what do you think?

[CoopAir]

I am fairly new to UW videography and video editing, so I just wanted to see what the more experienced of you think about this video. Not so much the cuts, but more the white balancing and color correction. I was at normal rec depths 40 to 70' during most of this film which was shot in 100% natural light.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=u-U2mY8ckws

In this film I WB'd (Nikon P-7100 with red filter) using a white slate, but when I imported it to I-Movie, I noticed it was still a bit bluer than I preferred.


So what I did (and I like this a lot, but just my opinion) is instead of clicking on a close by white object in post, I clicked on the sand at a distance of 10 to 20 ft away so it would "over" WB it and bring out the reds more.

When able, I even clicked on the water itself off in the distance which of course over WB's it, but doing this seemed to bring out the reds a lot more than clicking on the sand nearby


So the big question I have is, do you guys think there is too much red in this video? I happen to like overdoing the WB instead of underdoing it, but I wanted to see what you thought.

Thanks everyone

 

[tajkd]

I'm no expert but I have found that lighting makes all the difference in underwater photography and video. There is no way to "compensate" imo with either white balance adjustment or post processing to get a pleasing color from films without good lights. That's just my 2 cents.

 

[EL Pistoffo]

I haven't been able to yet test my camera and WB at those depths yet (in less than 2 weeks I will). I would have figured that your red filter would have brought out more reds. What filter where you using? The video color is not too bad, I would have expected some more red maybe.
I, myself WB using a WB reference card, actually a set of cards with a white, gray and black. Within Sony Vegas Pro I use a color correction filter with three color wheels. I use the dropper tool from each wheel and click on my corresponding WB card. This was giving me what I though was good color correction until yesterday I used a different app, GoPros Cineform and used its built in WB picker. Using that and only my white card, it gave me much better color than the other method did in Vegas Pro. My camera is a GoPro so that may have something to do with it. Also, I did not use a red filter. It was shallower than your dives, 20ft, but the raw footage was still very lifeless, mostly green, blue, very little red. I did try the WB with the red filter and I got very similar final results. I will post some screen shots soon.

No Color Correction:

Sony Vegars Pro three card WB correction:

Cineform single white card WB correction:

This shot turned out not being the best example but the difference between the Vegas Pro and Cineform results is often greater. Cineforms WB gives more reds.

 

[SailNaked]

I am about to make my own next week, I'll post it, and let you know what I did.

 

[matdiver]

CoopAir,
I'd be perfectly happy with those colours. In some places, the overall image is slightly too saturated/contrasty for my taste, but that's purely subjective. Colours are absolutely fine IMHO.
I'm hoping to finish an edit soon from my trip to the Maldives in August, which I'll post here. I stumbled across a different method for WB'ing my Pana GH2. I used a piece of white translucent plastic detergent bottle to cover the filter, and pointed it to the brightest part of the sky (or white sand). Had to let the camera adjust ISO and aperture automatically whilst WB'ing, but it worked really well for most diving situations. It's like using an Expodisc underwater.

Matt