white balancing issues with a panasonic TZ10

[froggie01]

hi everyone,

I am in dahab egypt now and I had this problem today. When I take the picture of a subject with a rock as a close background like that of the scorpion fish attached, the colours come out fine; but in the other picture the background being open sea or white sand, the colours don't come out even when the subject is pretty close. I used manual mode and I set the white balance at that specific depth manually. Shutter speed around 160 and aperture 3.5 . I'm trying different things and will be experimenting more tomorrow; but if you have any suggestion thanks for posting them

 

[DazedAndConfuzed]

How do you set white balance? If it is by aiming at a white card, that would only apply for a subject that is similar distance to the white card.

You are not using the flash for any of the shots?

 

[froggie01]

hi,
I use a white card at arms length in front of the camera. The fish on the right picture is about the same distance. I tried using underwater mode today and got better results. I also tried working with exposure. It seems the camera is very sensitive to ambiant light and will give widely different results according to the scene/light.

 

[DazedAndConfuzed]

Then you must have did the WB wrong. After you do manual WB, the viewfinder should all of a sudden look very reddish (since your eyes has adapted to the blue-ness of underwater, normal colors would look excessively red).

Maybe practice performing WB above with different color background to see if the screen turns to its subtractive color (point it at a red wall and set manual WB and see if screen turns all blue, etc).