Why are all my pics blue?

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I just started playing around with underwater photography

Don't do that. It's a waste of time and money. Photography is an art and science whether above or below water. When you play around with it, you get results just like playing around with oil painting, or helicopter-flying.

no matter how colorful the reefs are they always turn out blue.

You bought a poor camera for scuba from a company that knew you would be disappointed. Here's proof.

Sorry if that offends some folks that already have this thing, but if you think this is a good camera, suitable for scuba-based U/W photography, you need to re-think.

I strongly believe that other divers need to be informed and protected from stuff like this.

Is the only remedy for this to buy a strobe light?

No. That will just send good money after bad. Their flash is small, expensive, propietary and inflexible as to position. It is as inadequate as the camera. In all but ideal circumstances, wielded by a knowledgable shooter (which no offense you clearly are not), it will still produce backscatter and blue photos.

I tried using flash but when I do I get hundreds of orbs in the pictures that ruin everything.

With this strobe, you will still get hundreds of orbs in the picture (backscatter) unless the water is crystal clear and/or you are shooting a close-up subject.

This camera is for kayakers and Seattle joggers. U/W mode won't help anything unless you're snorkeling in Crystal Clear Water. Auto mode will always turn on the flash, the camera will always go to Flash White Balance and everything will be blue. You can't use a filter for anything except video because the moment you turn on the flash the filter will turn everything red. There is no place to put a filter on this camera anyway (at least that I can see).

The makers should have provided a flash diffuser, but they never intended for you to get flash photos underwater. They placed the flash (diffused or not) precisely where it will make the most backscatter possible. I'm guessing they called it U/W because after 2m drop shock-proofing and water resistance for other uses, it was good to 40 meters anyway. So why not expand the target market?

I would advise you to put it on E-Bay and call it a lesson. I wish I could write something more encouraging, but it would just be doing damage in the long run.

regretfully
 
https://www.shearwater.com/products/teric/

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