White balance and achieving natural colours in ambient light?

[globalbabe]

Hi all

I am new to underwater photography, having done my first trip with my camera and housing (Canon G12 + Fisheye FIX G12) last month to Mafia & Zanzibar, Tanzania. I haven't yet been able to get a strobe (due to horrific customs duties and taxes on imported goods where I live) so did the first trip without artificial lighting. Though I am an experienced professional photographer, I quickly realised how difficult underwater photography is! It did terrible things to my air consumption, buoyancy control and situational awareness too!

So I did a lot of playing around with the white balance - experimenting with setting the custom white at each depth 5m higher or lower than the last setting vs the same white balance throughout the dive, testing the 'Cloudy' setting which I read about in an underwater photography guide, trying the 'Underwater' white balance setting (and ruled that out), etc - I found that I could not achieve natural colours. Everything pretty much has a blue tinge to it, which I believe is a pretty common result for new underwater photographers. So I was wondering if this is due to my technique (perhaps not mastering custom white balance settings) or is it only possible to get natural colours when you light your subject with a strobe?

Here's a small selection of what I shot so you can see some of my initial results:


Snapper swimming away


Bubble anemone with anemonefish


Dolphins at Mnemba


Black saddle coral grouper


Shoaling emperors

 

[Interceptor121]

Custom white balance done on a white slate works until max 10 meters and if it is really bright such as sandy bottom
Also will work generally for wide angle but not for close up as there is no room to get the light in the lens

So in short that is why you need a strobe, your fisheye will probably work ok for super macro but not for general photography

 

[Wisnu]

if you shot in raw, you can adjust WB with grey coral/sand or anything white to grey later.
if you shot in jpg like i mostly did, for natural light, you adjust manual wb similarly as above or even your palm, make sure the light from behind.
this picture was taken with my old Oly SP-350 few years ago, manual WB, no strobe, jpg - with 10 bucks wide angle lens bought from ebay.



Now, we have newer camera and strobes, so most pics taken with strobe - but for video we still rely on natural light. similar, grey coral as manual wb reference. Here the result, taken at dept 13 - 15 m.
[video=vimeo;29965696]http://vimeo.com/29965696[/video]

 

[Interceptor121]

If you don't want to go for strobes you can try with a filter as I do for video but the apertures will be quite high in order to get some light in and that is not great for pictures
As said generally the WB option is good for very wide angle and large things as you get into the one foot distance you need a strobe

 

[davetowz]

Good advice so far, I like the way your pics turned out anyway! keep playing and without film, snap away! I am also learning my cam and it still can take much better pics than I can.

 

[PatW]

Well, at any kind of depth, it can't be done depending on exactly what you mean. I am not entirely clear what your exact meaning is. Red light is absorbed by the first 15' of the water column. Red colors below that point will just be gone. Red light goes first followed by the other long wave lengths in the spectrum as you descend: red, orange, yellow, green and finally blue. You might be able to get a bit back with manipulating white balance. But to get the "natural" effect, you need to replace the absorbed light which means using an artificial light source.

The farther down you go, the greater the effect that light absorption by water has on the spectrum. At depths of 80', it is a blue world.

I have taken photos with strobes and often the colors that show up on fish are quite a bit different than what I recall seeing. Seeing the colors for what they would be on the surface often reveals a whole different world.

 

[MauiScubaSteve]

... I found that I could not achieve natural colours. Everything pretty much has a blue tinge to it, which I believe is a pretty common result for new underwater photographers. So I was wondering if this is due to my technique (perhaps not mastering custom white balance settings) or is it only possible to get natural colours when you light your subject with a strobe?

You might be able to get a bit back with manipulating white balance. But to get the "natural" effect, you need to replace the absorbed light which means using an artificial light source.

The farther down you go, the greater the effect that light absorption by water has on the spectrum. At depths of 80', it is a blue world.

I have taken photos with strobes and often the colors that show up on fish are quite a bit different than what I recall seeing. Seeing the colors for what they would be on the surface often reveals a whole different world.

Carthaginian 007 - halemano's Photos | SmugMug

http://www.scubaboard.com/forums/hawaii-ohana/204383-carthaginian-shore.html

Natural color is hard to describe, much less remember, and perhaps impossible to achieve.

Do we really remember what it really looked like to our natural eyes, or do we have some internal "auto color" adjustment function in our brains. Deep marine life is often very colorful, but if nothing can tell that the toxic or poisonous animals are bright red, why are the deep toxic or poisonous animals bright red? And if it really is a blue world below 80' deep, is it really more "natural" replacing the absorbed light with an artificial light source?

Often with ambient photography I have a hard time trying to remember what it actually looked like to my natural eyes, after progressively changing the look of a picture in Photoshop. Or comparing two different amounts of adjustment to the same pic, and trying to decide which one is most natural looking, and sometimes I just give up and look for the look I like best.



The links above are a max depth 117' dive with no strobe, no WAL, all shot in Full Auto mode, in RAW, and post processed with PS Elements. Now I had an advantage over the OP, in that the Olympus C5050Z is perhaps the best ever at capturing what I was capturing, and then after the dive I perhaps stumbled onto a really good post processing path for the conditions that day. Looking down in the thread, Mark (howard4113) posts a pic and link to his pics of a similar dive, with a strobe, and his ambient shots are strikingly different (from mine and from each other).

Below are shots from that dive (for those who don't follow links), as well as a shot, after I did end up following through with the last post pipe dream (a shot with strobe, WAL and manual settings) and then finally a 50' deep ambient shot that I still have not got right, after many tries. The sand at the wreck is ~98' depth.

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[MauiScubaSteve]

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[globalbabe]

Thanks so much for the feedback and tips. I think I am getting a better understanding of the issue and am really looking forward to getting a strobe at Xmas time so I can achieve different results. Next dive trip is to the Seychelles tonight for a week so time to practice more ambient light photography!