White balance for rich green water

CDoyal,

 

According to Alex it makes a difference for his shooting style - he wrote it right into his original post.

 

"I prefer my images to look spot on in camera. If things don't look great on the LCD I tend not to push a photo-oppurtunity and get all the potential from them. And without doing this I tend not to get those really special shots."

 

Cheers

James

James-

You're right. I missed it in his original post.

Chris

Hi Guys,

I would like to hijack this 'witch-hunt' for just one second please?

Alex, when you say that you like the lower example of the temperate green in your supplied images, I was wondering if that is a true color or your preferred color for the green water?

I ask this, simply, because I am not well travelled and only dive locally in the temperate waters of southern Oz. Our water is alos temperate and described as green water, but, our green is more of a greyish green and entirely different to that displayed in your images...For me, this is a learning curve, and if that is the color green over 'your' side, then I don't think that the WB settings for our cameras would be the same?

Any suggestions on where to start, so that I could begin to 'dial in' my camera's preferred WB settings would be appreciated...

Thanks for taking the time,

Bruce

Hi Bruce,

It is pretty green-green here - probably not quite as emeraldy as I am hoping to achieve. Basically I am after the green look I have seen in film shots over many years. Here are a couple of recent film examples taken in the same waters (scroll down):

http://www.bsoup.org/Splash/2005/Martin_Davies.php

Alex

Alex

My experience is that temperate water varies dramatically in its colour! I've shot real 'tropical' blue waters off the west of Ireland and extremely rich turbid green waters nearer home in the Menai Strait, with just about every variance in between depending on location, prevailing conditions, time of year, etc.. The amount of and fineness of suspended matter influences water colour as do many other factors (rain run off in the Menai Strait for example). Achieving the colour you want might be just as much to do with choosing appropriate conditions as anything else.

Hello,

here is my contribution from Portugal´s green waters:

D70s ; 12Ago07 ; Only resized on Capture NX ; WB Auto-1 ; one Alpha Pro no filter on it ; 1/90 at f/16 ; Tokina 10-17 at 10 behind 8" Dome (still waiting for a 20mm extension ring ) ; Color Mode II ; Normal Saturation; at 22m deep ; bright clear summer sky at noon ; 6 meters visibility