Success MWB'ing your Sony at depth?

[Shasta_man]

My question is about whether you have successfully manually white balanced your Sony camera at depth.

I have a Sony XR500. My experience is that many times when trying to white balance at depth, it won't white balance and just blinks the one push symbol refusing to white balance. I believe it's related to the amount of light available, requiring quite a bit of light before it will white balance.

However, my manual white balance controls are not easy to use at depth and that may have something to do with the problem. Before I try to improve the controls, I'd like to know that the camera will actually white balance at depth below 25 feet.

As for white balance itself, in clear water in Indonesia for example, down to about 25 feet in direct sunlight, with the red filter on, using AWB, it takes pretty nice color, though the red filter (or combination with AWB) causes some objects to appear red when they aren't. Without the filter, it's just blue and washed out. The filter type has no effect, with either blue or green water filter having the same effect. Below 25 feet and away from sunlight, using AWB, the video is just green as hell. Clear sharp HD, but green as hell.

So I'd like to try to fix my manual controls to fix that problem, but want to be sure people have been able to actually white balance at depth.

What's your experience?

 

[BDSC]

I have a Sony CX520 and a CX500 and use them with a L&M housing that has the "one touch MWB" button and have had no problem at all getting them to WB well below 25 ft. Now I pretty much do Caribbean diving so the vis is good to great usually. But I have tested my rig to see how deep it would MWB and I've had success at 50 ft. numerous times.

 

[Shasta_man]

Thanks for the response.

So you have an electronic button to push for WBing? You just connect a LANC cable for connections? I didn't know that anyone had been able to achieve electronic MWB control. That's great.

 

[BDSC]

Yes, my housing has it. It wasn't possible until Sony came out with the CX and I'm pretty sure the XR series you have as well. It's a true "one push" button and takes the camera maybe 5 seconds to do it but it works great. Before you had to do a series of about three pushes of a mechanical button so it's much easier now. Also, the series we have has an improved sensor for low light capability so WB at depth has also improved but still has limitations.

 

[sinistar]

As for white balance itself, in clear water in Indonesia for example, down to about 25 feet in direct sunlight, with the red filter on, using AWB, it takes pretty nice color, though the red filter (or combination with AWB) causes some objects to appear red when they aren't. Without the filter, it's just blue and washed out. The filter type has no effect, with either blue or green water filter having the same effect. Below 25 feet and away from sunlight, using AWB, the video is just green as hell. Clear sharp HD, but green as hell..

What's your experience?

I have an older Sony in a L&M housing so I can't WB on the fly and thus always use the red filter below about 15' and then correct in post. However as I read about the newer units that have accessible MWB I have wondered if the red filter should even be used - I know the filter will cut down incoming blue and green but can these new cameras with 1 touch WB overcome this w/o the filter (plus all the extra light with filter out)?