A magic pic

I wanted to spend time this week taking magic filter shots, unfortunately I didn't get much of a chance to find subjects but did get this one. The hardest part is finding a good white balance source, not easy when you use a 10.5 lens. Does anyone have any tips to manual white balance with such a wide lens?

Alex and I had good results with our hands .... I wasn't quite that wide .. but i believe he used the 10.5 and used his hand.

Sure he will pipe up and tell you his best result ... sand at the same depth also ... i haven't seen him with his grey card in years.

I wasn't quite that wide

Are you going to let him get away with a comment like that Alex!!!???

Cheers

James

I use the sand too when I'm close to it but when not close then what, if you use your hand with a 10.5 lens then you would have to have your hand almost touching the port? Thx

I tend to just use the reef. Looking for fairly neutrally coloured areas - and avoiding strongly coloured corals, sponges or open water. But you are right, Patrick, it can be more tricky with the 10.5mm and I often prefer to fine tune the WB in ACR.

There is an example here:

http://www.magic-filters.com/wb.html

But I think that your result is pretty much spot on. So you aren't doing too much wrong!

Looks like the coral is reacquiring its colour after the partial bleaching in Sept/Oct. Which is good to see. Looking forward to seeing it with my own eyes in about 4 weeks.

Alex

Your hand is OK for a better than nothing - but it does tend to be a bit pinky and as a result tends to produce too cool a WB.

Alex

On a similar question Alex ... you may see in Patricks photo here .. on general reef scenes if you do have WHITE stuff like bleached coral which we have had some of ... why does it appear so over exposed ? is there a way to stop this as it obviously isn't over exposed but it is something to do with the white balance ?

I have an example somewhere which shows it much worse than patricks which is barely noticeable but the coral can if bleached appear almost glarey.

If you know you are going to be shooting pure white then custom wedding curves are a good solution. Otherwise underexpose a bit and then bring it up in PS, so you can capture some detail.

Also once printed white should be white. So don't worry about having a little bit in your frame.

Alex