White Balance

Very new to UW and have a Sealife DC-600 with strobe. I will be using auto focus primarily and want to know if I should leave the WB alone(auto) or set it in manual against my white slate? Most pics will be in 40-60 ft of water in Cozumel. Also, the manual descibes holding the slate to the camera but does not really tell me how to set it. Any advice will help

Dewayne

Newbie photo hound.

If you are using the strobe set, the white balance to cloudy. If you are not using the strobe, the white slate trick works pretty good but you need to adjust every couple of meters. Do not manual adjust the white balance and also shoot the strobe. The strobe will compensate for the lose of color

Will this camera shoot RAW format? If so, buy a Photoshop Elements and fix the white balance when you get back from the trip

How do you use your white slate? Hold it in front of your camera? Sorry, I'm really new and can't find much in my camera's manual!

Hi

White balancing can be tricky at the best of times, everyone has their own tricks and tips - here's mine.

I started out carrying a small slate and white balancing on the slate held at arms length. However this only gives you the correct WB at the current depth for a subject at arms length. If your subject is not at arms length then the WB will be wrong. I recently dived with Cesar Rhodas from Photo Roatan who gave me the following tips....

1. WB on your slate at arms length, and shoot everything at that distance (rarely possible)

2. Place your slate near your critter of interest, WB on the slate, then take your photo (ecologically bad, and usually scares off your subject)

3. Shoot in 'cloudy' WB and fix everything in post processing (tedious)

4. WB on the sun, zoom into the sunball, then WB on that (not bad actually, video guys do this all the time)

5. WB on a sandy area which is a similar depth/distance to your subject (easy, quick and not bad)

6. WB on a patch of reef near you subject, take the photo, review the picture. If not the correct colours, repeat with a different patch of reef. (By far the most fiddly, but best results for me - if the picture is too red, select a pink reef patch to WB on etc..)

You really need to search the manual for your camera though. The quick tip is to use a user definable button to carry out WB, so that it is quick to do rather than flicking through menus.

Hope this helps some

Cheers

Hal

In regards to the DC-600. I have the DC-500. This is a good beginner's underwater camera as it gives the beginner good results without having to fiddle with a lot of stuff at first. Read your manual. There are usually only two settings that you initally have to mess with. That being the underwater exposure with the strobe or the underwater setting without the strobe. If you are going to use the strobe set your camera to underwater with strobe & make sure you have the flash link in order to cover the internal flash & you should be set to go. Be careful though when shooting underwater as the flashlink tends to disengage from the lens, but 9 times out of 10 you'll see it as you'll see this black string floating in front of your lens, lol. Also make sure your stobe is pointed at your object of interest rather than off to the side or you will get shadows. Sealife Strobes have a tendancy to move quite a bit so check the strobe often. Other than that you shouldn't have to do to much.

Hope this helps!