Underwater white balance - got an idea

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Arty

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Location
Houston, TX
# of dives
25 - 49
OK, so I may be way off with this, please bear with me for a second. I like UW photography, and I prefer using natural light (just a personal preference - I'm a bit more of a landscape person (or sea floor scape in this case). I use Sony RX100, it's small yet functional enough for me under water. I'm however struggling with setting white balance - automatic WB is painfully bad and is a mess to try and fix in post-processing (shooting RAW of course). The only thing that worked for me was presetting WB off some target underwater. I have to do it every 5-10 ft of depth to keep it accurate but it beats having nearly unfixable blue/green tint.

My problem is that it's hard to find a more or less accurate target for WB preset when under water. When I can, I use my buddy's grey tank, but it's often a bit too far to be convenient - ideally it needs to be 1-2 ft away to be a reliable target. Sand patches don't really work either, they are off yellow or some other crazy tints. I even contemplated carrying 18% grey plastic cards but it becomes unmanageable since you now have to hold two things when presetting WB, and keep doing it every 10 minutes as your depth or lighting conditions change.

I think I came up with an idea to fix this problem. Before I continue though, is it just me living under a rock and the rest of the world solved this somehow? Is it even a problem worth solving for you all? Or do you just bring lights and preset your cameras at 5000 K or whatever your strobes / floodlights give you? Interested to hear any comments.
 
With natural light, the deeper you go the less color will available for white balance to adjust. At some point you are going to have to give in and use lights.
 
DGK Color Tools WDKK Waterproof Color Chart :wink:
DGK Chart.jpg

Warm 3 on the reverse side
DGK Color Tools WDKK Waterproof Color Chart
 

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The Sony cameras especially the RX100 are uncapable of white balance in water. This is a problem also for other series like the A7. The colors are pushed too hard off the marks to please and the camera regularly fails CWB or gives weird results even when it does not error.
With still images white balance helps but is not absolutely mandatory if you shoot RAW and this is what you need to do with the RX100 as CWB fails, with video is mandatory to get it right in camera so use a filter
 
I shoot RAW with a Canon s110 using only ambient light. I used to either shoot something close to grey (sand, rock, tank, etc.) every few minutes, or sometimes took a slate down with me and shot that. I found over time that I am almost always able to find something in each photo to use to set my WB. So now that's what I do and it almost always works fine. Setting WB in the camera is essentially irrelevant when shooting RAW.
 
I always shoot raw so I can balance in post, but when I need to balance I use my palm. Not white but close enough and it is usually within reach.
Bill
 
Great, so those of you who carry a slate, where you store it between uses - in a BCD pocket? Do you find the slate and its storage / use cumbersome in any way?
 
https://www.shearwater.com/products/swift/

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