manual and electronic white balance on the Phenom

On our last trip in Egypt I experimented with the manual and electronic white balance of the Phenom. I tried to white balance on my hand, the sand, the sun and the overall scene. The electronic white balance seems to work every time, but the results were not consistent. I had to rebalance multiple times to get the "correct" white balance.

The manual white balance did not work deeper than 5-10 meters. The light just kept on flashing.

Any tips and tricks that can help with the white balance?

Thanks,

Peter

The single most important element for any WB is light and contrast. When there isn't enough light or contrast, cameras cannot pick up the picture to assess what the colors are to shift the red/blue curve.

One way of doing a MWB is to MWB at 3-4m intervals from the surface down to your max depth. This seems to work for the Z1 and V1.

I personally just slap the filter on and move it to daylight and deal with it in post. Saves a lot of button pushing and readjustments and just allows the shooter to shoot.

One way of doing a MWB is to MWB at 3-4m intervals from the surface down to your max depth. This seems to work for the Z1 and V1.

Our dives where in the 45 to 85 meter range. That is some serious button pushing!! I think I'll follow your advice next time and do it completely in post.

What happened to this expodisc filter? Does it really help with instant WB?

At 45-85m I'd skip the filter altogether and just shoot, using with lights for closer shots. A filter absorbs about 2 stops of light. I'd rather have a blue picture than no picture.Filters don't really work as effectively as your depth increases.

Peter, I agree with Drew. Ditch the filter once you get below about 30m, it's just cutting out light and increasing the need for gain which will make ur picture noisy.

Personally I wouldn't give up on MWB for shallower stuff. If you're at something like 20m and you can't make that big leap in white balance because you haven't been white balancing on the way down, you can sometimes get a "rescue" white balance by zooming in on the sun and white balancing on that, before doing your normal technique to get the MWB you want.

Videodan has had a great deal of success with the Expodisc and his white balanced shots using it do look nice. Personally in my experience with it I found it doesn't give me anything I can't get in other ways, so I no longer use mine underwater. Maybe my conditions were different to Dan's. Used it on a couple of topside shoots recently however and quite liked it!

The electronic WB on the Phenom gives a different result than the Manual mod method, we have chatted about it a while back.

Try this for deeper dives.

At about 5-7 meters point it at the sun and Manual WB it.

This will give a warm-red feel to the picture and then when you go deeper you can flip your URPRO filter in when needed. I have been getting wonderful results at 30 meters even mixing in some lights for a great effect.

I never use the filter at depth. But I was really surprised how difficult WB with the FX1 is compared to my PDX10. Especially on the deep dives where you really don't have the time to play around with WB beceause of increasing deco time.

Next time I'll try to WB at regular intervals and the sun trick. If that doesn't work, its EDIUS color correction.

Question - If Manual WB fails and you switch the camera off via the button on the housing, which WB settings are then used?