White Balance Shift vs. MWB

Tried to read about this at Sony's site but can't find much info. What is the difference between MWB and White Balance Shift? Pro's and Con's? Mainly interested in the HC7.

Thanks again...

Tried to read about this at Sony's site but can't find much info. What is the difference between MWB and White Balance Shift? Pro's and Con's? Mainly interested in the HC7.

 

Thanks again...

I am no expert on this one but my understanding is that White Balance Shift is a setting that allows you to move the colour balance as a blanket setting - usually for underwater you would shift everything a few points toward red. Of course that means that your topside stuff will be too red, and your underwater stuff will be either too red up shallow, or too blue a bit deeper down. I suppose it would be useful if you are snorkelling and only shooting at a certain depth but otherwise it would never be quite right. It is usually in the menu and not accessible through a housing.

Manual White Balance on the other hand allows you to tell the camera exactly how far you want to shift the colour balance to achieve perfect colour at the depth or conditions you are at tight now. You point the camera at sand, a slate, or the sun and press the button and bingo - you should have nice colour.

In short - MWB is great and allows you to set your camera for any conditions and change them as the conditions change, WBS is not as versitile and you will end up doing a lot more colour correction in post.

I hope that's right. I have never actually used White Balance Shift. Anyone know different?

Cheers

Josh

NWD, the WB Shift is very subtle - handy for topside work but pretty useless u/w IMHO. At least on my HC7.

as pakman and Josh state, it will 'warm up' or cool 'down' the shot slightly. But pretty subtle, I've never used it underwater MWB is the go or correction in post.

How complicated is correction in post? Thinking AVCHD and Vegas Studio Platinum....

Thanks!

Thanks, one of the housings we are looking at, Seatool has access to White Balance Shift but not MWB.

I agree with everyone above. White balance shift is next to useless for underwater footage. Personally I'd strongly say that if a HDV housing does not offer MWB then forget about it. I've found it very, very hard to colour correct HDV footage when I have not been able to MWB for whatever reason.

Hope this helps.

Cheers, Simon

I am no expert on this but have found if you cannot MWB for some reason, e.g no access to button or lack of light then when shooting shoot something white like a slate and also at the same depth something black (wetsuit). Most colour correction software has a white / black balance option which will get you into the correct ball park and it is a question of tinkering to get the look that you want.