Video vs. Stills - light and Color

So, i was discussing with Justin (D70, Sea&Sea wetpixel member) the interesting "fact" that uw video is much more fogiving than stills. In low light, video seems to reach through the water and still pick out colors and contrast in the distance. Stills (with all there mega-pixels and exp sensors) seem terribly reliant upon strobes. We have many theories why this is the case...but would love to not bias others opinions. Anyone have good insight on this?

Yes...

Obviously, we can drink more beer than still shooters, have prettier girlfriends / boyfriends / animal friends ?? and bigger muscles.

Also my dads bigger than theirs and drives a tractor and does karate and ..and ... and. SO THERE !!!! ner ner nee ner ner.

Hope this helps

Dive safe

DeanB

Yeah, my Dads 'arder than your dad. You'll get well beetans.

Don't mind the Brits Shawn.... its the weather i think.

One reason taht comes to my mind right away is that stills depend on a shutter opening and closing. Video does not in the same way...

There is bound to be more info out there somewhere... but its early and i just started drinking coffee and don't want to hurt my brain thinking....

I'll try jumping in.

I think a major difference between video and stills was the difference between film and electronics.

With film, particularly slide film, you had no control over color except adding light. What the film “saw†was what you got. Filters could be used, but were not precise enough to be usable. You could do some manipulation of prints in the darkroom, but it was not easy. (Kodak offered print manipulation specific to underwater for a while)

Video, even above water has always made use of filters and white balance. Use the filter to get close, and then white balance to get it just right.

With digital cameras, you can do most of the same things as video. Set manual white balance, or shoot Raw and then white balance after the fact. If you look at what Alex Mustard it doing with his Magic Filters with still and no flash you see results similar to video. He even says he was inspired by seeing what could be done with video.

Magic Filters

On a still camera you need a strobe to stop the motion or things become blurry at 1/30 or 1/60. A video camera records motion and thereby the eye blends things better.

Most video cameras have CCD's which are more sensitive than the CMOS sensors in still cameras. Sony, for instance, had to do much work to adapt a CMOS sensor for use in their new video cameras.

Video cameras have a lower MP count and thereby can have sensors with larger individual pixel receptors and/or use multiple receptors to record a recorded pixel. They also use 4:2:0 subsampling and dedicate more (green) elements to luminance over color.

Video cameras can also cheat by adding sensor gain but it introduces noise.

Video cameras often have pretty large optics and that doesn't hurt either.