hc7 hc9 white balance

Whenever I shoot below about 15m with my hc9 Gates housing wp25 I get a greenish or blueish tinge, same with the hc7, even when I use MWB it still doesnt have the colour clarity I would like and I often WB and then se the red filter on top to get close to a colour I would like. Am I white balancing on the wrong thing?.. Ive tried Caribbean "white" sand, deep blue long shot and close up white slate.. none of these seem to give as good a col,our as I have had shooting with friends old and much less good quality sonys with an ikelite housing and external filter.. Is the Gates filter to blame? Would it be worth trying Magic Filter.. the idea was not to need a filter with the MWB..Am I just asking te impossible of my camera?.. If I can get the lighting conditions perfect.. ie angle of entry of daylight with good amount of light, bright day etc I can get the colour I would like but its not constant.. any ideas please?

Thanks and happy diving...

To clarify, you are using MWB then popping the filter in? Or is the filter in already?

Hello Sirenita,

I noticed in one of your earlier posts regarding this housing that you didn't originally have the white balance control installed on your housing.

Have you had the actual white balance control installed or are you using the white balance shift?

I would definitely not recommend using the red filter after white balancing. That is definitely going to throw off your colors.

Do you have any problem white balancing the camera on the surface?

The Gates filter, which is a UR Pro filter, definitely shouldn't be the problem.

Do you have any sample footage, or frame grabs you can show us? Something that will illustrate the problem. The more information you give us, the better answer you'll get.

Also, don't hesitate to contact Gates directly. Their technical support is simply phenomenal.

Whenever I shoot below about 15m with my hc9 Gates housing wp25 I get a greenish or blueish tinge, same with the hc7, even when I use MWB it still doesnt have the colour clarity I would like and I often WB and then se the red filter on top to get close to a colour I would like. Am I white balancing on the wrong thing?.. Ive tried Caribbean "white" sand, deep blue long shot and close up white slate.. none of these seem to give as good a colour as I have had shooting with friends old and much less good quality sonys with an ikelite housing and external filter.. Is the Gates filter to blame? Would it be worth trying Magic Filter.. the idea was not to need a filter with the MWB..Am I just asking the impossible of my camera?.. If I can get the lighting conditions perfect.. ie angle of entry of daylight with good amount of light, bright day etc I can get the colour I would like but its not constant.. any ideas please?

Thanks and happy diving...

From my experience with HCx cameras underwater, you'll get better and more consistent results doing the WB off a card. I have a white plastic slate permanently attached to my housing on a flexible arm. It swings into and out of place quickly and sits under the camera out of the way when not in use. (It can also be used a "tripod" leg to stabilise the camera if placing it down on the sand to shoot some shy creature). See attached images.

The manual WB feature of the HCx cameras only works in relatively bright light. If you see the WB symbol flashing after trying to do a manual WB, it means that it did not have enough light to do achieve a WB. I find that, in clear tropical water, I can WB down to about 15 meters with natural surface light. After 15 meters, I am going to add some artificial video lighting so I will turn the lights on and include them in the WB. I can adjust the percentage of video and natural light falling on the WB slate by positioning the lights and angling the whole housing relative to the surface. Getting the right balance between the two just takes experience and depends on what you are shooting.

If you are going to do a close-up where the video lights will dominate, do another WB with most of the light that falls on the WB slate coming from the lights, otherwise it'll be too red.

On deeper dives, during the descent, do a manual WB somewhere between 10 and 15 meters deep, depending on water clarity) and use that throughout the dive. The deeper footage will be too blue but you can fix that. Don't try and manually WB the camera any deeper (unless diving in crystal clear water) as you'll lose the last good WB that you did during the descent. if you get the flashing WB symbol, come up a few meters or try positioning the card where it reflects more surface light. Having the card connected with a flexible arm makes this easier.

Make sure you include some footage of the white slate at each depth level (say 10 meters, 15 meters, 20 meters, 30 meters). This footage can be used as a reference (click the highlight eye dropper on the white of the slate) when editing the video to create a color profile adjustment. You can use the same color adjustment for all footage shot at around that depth in the same lighting conditions.

If you are going to use manual WB, do not use the red filter or any other filter.

I don't think you will ever get perfect WB underwater with this type of camera (or most other prosumer video cameras). The idea is to get as close as possible and then fix the rest on your computer. Audiences seem to tolerate bluish underwater footage quite well. They don't like greenish footage. So, if you have a lot of green, try to nudge it from green to blue in your video editing software.

Good luck...

Regards

Peter

Peter... thanks for taking time to share your experience. I have recently purchased some similiar gear, and your comments will help me learn the tricks sooner.

THANKYOU Peter so so much.. thats the most comp`lete reply Ive ever had re: this question! Dont have the proper Gates slate but I reckon I can improvise something good. Im off to Cocos again next week, this time with my camera and I want it to be AMAZING!! - the foiotage, not just the diving.. the divings heaven whatever.. I usually work here in the Craibbean, clear water etc etdc, but I do find that the symbol keeps flashing ( and it doesnt on land..) so I figured it was propbably not blancing properly.. it does it a bit but always seems to lavk red, thats why Ive been adding the red filter after as well.. but the tip about doing the final WB at 15m sounds like a good plan.. I shall try it on my try dive in Cocos and when I have something pretty to show you I(ll stick it on the site.. I never include video clips just because I dont have internet at home ( I live in Mexico- its been complicated .. and its a pain downloading stuff in net cafes.. anyway enough ramblig Thanks again.. BUT really biiiig thanks.. VERY useful info!.. Id also noticed that friend shwo dont use wide angle dont have the same problem,and that on my little Cannon, when I MWB with no extra lens the colour is great, but when I use my fish eye, the colour is less good, less vivid profound.. as if the lens diffuses the light a bit and makes the colour correction of the MWB less intense???? biut Im not in any way very camera experienced so its just an observation so far.. trouble is you cant change ports on the gates underwater and I like filming in Wide angle... hmmm and maybe comparing my footage negatively with Blue Planet/Planet Earth may be being just a LITTLE too demanding of both me and my equipment !

...If you are going to use manual WB, do not use the red filter or any other filter....

Regards

Peter

Peter I'm a little confused about your above comment. I'm new at this WB and CC theory, and attempting to better understand how all this WB and CC usage works. Your input is appreciated.

Now.. if a person is restoring the lost warm colors by bringing down with them some video lights.. then the method you've described above seem appropriate. WB with the light source directed on to the WB slate, and not make use of CC filters.

From what little that I know.. if one is shooting with the sun as the only light source, my understanding is that the purpose of adding a CC warming filter (such as the UW Pro or such) is not to restore any warmer reds but instead is used to remove some of the blue color cast. A filter can only restore the balance of warm and cool color tones that are present at depth. However, it seems to me then that if one is using a CC filter the WB step would best be performed with the CC filter installed?

Thanks again for your prior comments. It was was very helpful.

Wolfeel et al.

What Peter uses is a method of WB that seems to work with consumer cameras. When you MWB at say 30ft, you shift the color to the red space, probably nearing the 10-12k °K limit that most of these consumer cameras have. Then once you go deeper, you put the filter on to compensate for the loss of reds. His 2nd method of using a white slate (I prefer a 18% grey card or even a grey glove) allows for easier color correction in post. Both these methods combined work well to bring back some color for ambient light shooting.

Unlike RAW photography and how it's stored, WB is included in the compression of the data. Shifting the reds around can create color noise in post. It's pretty important to develop a good color grading workflow to minimize noise while bringing back color.

Peter I'm a little confused about your above comment. I'm new at this WB and CC theory, and attempting to better understand how all this WB and CC usage works. Your input is appreciated.

 

Now.. if a person is restoring the lost warm colors by bringing down with them some video lights.. then the method you've described above seem appropriate. WB with the light source directed on to the WB slate, and not make use of CC filters.

Just remember that a CC filter can not ADD color. All it can do is REDUCE other colors to alter an overall balance. If the camera is being correctly white-balance on a white slate that is picking up a representative sample of light that is falling on the scene, all the filter will do is reduce the overall light level and increase grain.

Regards

Peter