TG-4 White Balance issues/question

[Simon East]

I actually got it to register today but was only at 12 metres in pretty bright light. The pictures I took were quite good however.

I find that I get one sided colour using macro as the flash is very apparently providing a left hand light source too.

I keep wondering about strobes but the bulk puts me off.

As you say the quality of the image is great and if I could just get decent WB I know the results would be very good....

Keep me in the loop please and if I get anywhere I'll post. Tomorrow I'm trying a bigger white card.

Hi Simon,

No, unfortunately, I haven't found a resolution. I gave up and finally emailed Olympus a few days back to see if they would comment. I agree with you 100%. The built in WB modes and presets are pretty terrible for underwater (everything is just a different shade of blue) so if you don't want to lug around extra lights or spend hours in Lightroom correcting RAW files then manually setting the WB is the way to go.

I'm in the same boat as you, I'm extremely frustrated. I can see that the TG-4 is much sharper and focuses much better than the old TG-830 I was using. But, if every picture turns out blue, why bother? Add in that the cheaper TG-830 will set the WB under ANY conditions and that just escalates my frustration.

With that, my next trip isn't until January so I'm going to ping Olympus for a bit and pray that they can/will fix things.

I'll post here if I hear anything.

 

[ron_dodge]

I actually got it to register today but was only at 12 metres in pretty bright light. The pictures I took were quite good however.

I find that I get one sided colour using macro as the flash is very apparently providing a left hand light source too.

I keep wondering about strobes but the bulk puts me off.

As you say the quality of the image is great and if I could just get decent WB I know the results would be very good....

Keep me in the loop please and if I get anywhere I'll post. Tomorrow I'm trying a bigger white card.

Good luck with the bigger white card. Let us know how it goes.

 

[bmorescuba]

I know you said you don't want to have to set the WB for every photo using Lightroom, but is it really that much trouble??

First off, you don't need to set it for anything except potential keepers. And then, it's only 2 sliders and you get a picker tool. Plus, for shots that are roughly the same depth with the same surface light penetration, once you find the right setting, you can just copy and paste the values onto all other shots at that same depth.

For custom white balance to be accurate, it should be recalibrated for every 5ft of depth change. And filters at their best are an approximation for a range of depths, and not accurate for any one depth in particular. Shooting in RAW and setting the WB for each shot in LR seems like a much easier and more accurate solution in the long run. I've had good luck with that method and the TG-4. Then again, I'm a keyboard jockey and I'm sitting in front of a computer 12 hours a day anyway.

 

[Simon East]

For me I have two issues. Firstly I have no time to sit at home fettling pictures. Secondly and I guess more importantly I shouldn't have to, there's no reason the white balance should not be set under water...the TG-4 is a camera with great potential for dive photography and this is a major glitch imo.

By way of update on today's dives I took a large (a5) white card and ensured it was not in shadow. 'WB NG retry' every time.

 

[Simon East]

Good luck with the bigger white card. Let us know how it goes.

No luck.

 

[Wade85]

Hi All,

My set up negates the need for the massive strobe as well as lights the white card for auto white balance. Essentially I mount a GoPro and side by side video light.

I wrote a blog and made video about my set up if you are interested:

http://wadeabout.com/blog/dive-july-2016-gear-update

w