mccabejc
Contributor
Just got done with an UW photography class in Bonaire, and wanted to get others' thoughts on some items:
1. White Balance: My understanding is that with UW photos, since you are using a strobe which has a color temperature about equal with filtered sunlight on a cloudy day, you don't need any or much white balance compensation. If you do use AWB, for example, then prior to shooting the photo the AWB will see the blue tint at depth, compensate by increasing the reds, and when the strobe goes off you will end up getting a red tinted photo. Therefore, you should put your AWB setting on Cloudy.
2. Exposure: Assuming your shots will have white sand or the light blue of the water surface in the background, you set the camera's exposure so that the light background will not be overexposed. The strobe then provides lighting for the foreground subject. To do this, you can set the Exposure Value at -1.0 to -2.0 to intentionally underexpose so the the background will be correct, and let the flash take care of the foreground.
Do these make sense?
1. White Balance: My understanding is that with UW photos, since you are using a strobe which has a color temperature about equal with filtered sunlight on a cloudy day, you don't need any or much white balance compensation. If you do use AWB, for example, then prior to shooting the photo the AWB will see the blue tint at depth, compensate by increasing the reds, and when the strobe goes off you will end up getting a red tinted photo. Therefore, you should put your AWB setting on Cloudy.
2. Exposure: Assuming your shots will have white sand or the light blue of the water surface in the background, you set the camera's exposure so that the light background will not be overexposed. The strobe then provides lighting for the foreground subject. To do this, you can set the Exposure Value at -1.0 to -2.0 to intentionally underexpose so the the background will be correct, and let the flash take care of the foreground.
Do these make sense?
