Advice Needed: Whtie Balance Setting

Does anybody have any advice on how to set the camera's white balance settings?

I am using a Oly 5050 with a S&S DX90 and I was planning to set "cloud" white balance. I now realized that is also possible to manually shift the white balance from blue to red in custom settings.

Did anybody experiment with this? What would be the best setting for underwater pictures?

Thanks in advance,

Andreas

In the case of the 5050, you can shoot RAW mode and bypass the in-camera white balance. Without filters, the auto white balance seldom works well except in strobe-only shots. The coldest settings like cloudy or shade are the best but their effects relatively minor. If you willing to go to the trouble of using custom white balance you'd be better off shooting raw and custom balancing on the PC. The Adobe RAW converter works well with the camera.

I have a 5050 and I have tried sunny, cloudy, and automatic. I have yet to do better than automatic and sometimes with cloudy and sunny I have messed up the blues bad enough they are hard to fix with photo editing.

I now use only automatic.

For more on the settings I use, see the following URL.

http://www.splashdowndivers.com/photo_gall...up_settings.htm

Bullfeathers

Much depends on what you're shooting WITH. As mentioned, if you are going to shoot in RAW mode, then set AUTO and fix it later in the software. But if not, then you need to figure out the right WB setting or you lose enough quality to have major problems with the images which you can't correct post-shot.

If shooting with a flash, use "auto" - leave it alone, and use your flash. That's the "right" setting for a flash macro shot (and all flash shots are, more or less, macroish - a few feet away or less)

If you're shooting available light, here's the trick I use - it WORKS. This is also the way I've found to exploit the 5050's movie mode and not have to play with color correction later.

Take with you something that is either white or neutral gray. I get lucky - the palm of my dive glove is neutral gray.

Get to the depth you're going to shoot at. Select "manual" white balance, point at the palm of the glove so it fills the entire frame, and click the "ok".

Your white balance is now adjusted for the depth you are at.

Just don't forget that you have to do it again if you change depth significantly! More than 5-10' of depth change will make your pictures WAY off-balance so you have to do it again.

This has been VERY successful down to 120-130' or so for me, shooting available light. For flash, I put the camera back on "auto". Be aware that available light shooting gets VERY difficult as you go deeper due to camera shake issues and very slow shutter speeds, plus the camera stepping up the ISO (if you left that on "auto") does damage to your image quality due to sensor noise. Olympus has a decent noise reduction function that you can engage to try to alleviate that with some success, but the shake issue can really only be addressed by finding something to brace the camera against - which of course doesn't work underwater in a lot of environments, and doesn't work at all if you're shooting aquatic life since it likes to move

You can also, as noted, shoot in raw mode if you have the software that can read it AND the storage space to do so on your CF or xD card.

craig, peter and genesis,

i would like you to help clarify a point for me around white balancing:

I have just started to use 2 set-ups

Oly5050+PT-015+UR/Pro CY filter (assuming warm/blue waters) RAW formats all the time

Oly5050+PT-015+D-180

(just did my first dive with it this weekend so still learning both the flash itself and how to use an external flash - i searched the board for some pointers on this combo but did not find anything, so any primers would be more than welcome)

i am considering using SHQ instead of RAW at times for this set-up

In the first case, if i have understood all that you have said, i do not need to worry about with balancing, as this will be done in Adobe Raw when i import the photos. Is that correct? Also, is it worth bracketing, or should i just rely on the Raw processor to help with that?

In the second set-up I don't need to worry about it either as i will be using a flash.

Note for both set-ups i am still using the P mode. will be getting to play with the semi-manual modes once i get a good feel for the flash.

And last, but not least, do you think that set-up 1 (no flash and with filter) could support the use of a WAL? or is that pushing that enveloppe too far?

anyway thanks in advance for your comments and input on this and for helping out a newbie.

/paul

On the last point, maybe.

I'd rather either set white balance or do post-processing color correction than use a filter for still photography. You lose at least one and perhaps two stops of light using the filter, and that can make a big difference. I'd try the WAL with manual white balance and no filter if you're shooting available light. You may or may not be happy with the results, with much depending on how much light you have and therefore how high of an ISO rating you need to use to get an acceptable depth of field and shutter speed.

The filter is more "mandatory" for video, in that many video cameras cannot easily adjust white balance, and even if they can they often don't have the range of adjustment that the still cameras do - particularly the Oly 5050 (which is the subject of your question), which has a VERY wide range of adjustment available.

thanks for the pointers. i am planning to try the manual wb technique. i also noticed that the filter seems to make focusing more difficult on the 5050, certainly when the shooting towards the blue.

right now i am just getting into using the flash so will be concentrating on that for a while.

again thanks for the advice

/paul

If any of you haven't, you may want to check out the "Available Light" topic in the "Tips and Techniques" forum ... there ARE reasons to use filters shooting digital still.

I'm with Genesis - a 5050 with manual WB all I use is my slate - no white gloves - infact no gloves! the results are better than my ys 90 Auto strobe...

Remember, the stop or two you lose is the green and blue light that you don't want. The light lost is light you want to lose anyway to optimize the color performance of your sensor. If you can't afford to lose that light, then there's not enough red to get a good picture to begin with. In other words, you are going the "throw away" that light digitally if you don't remove it with a filter first. So what's the concern over the stop or two?

The only argument against using a filter for ambient light is if you are too shallow to need it or too deep to benefit from it. Otherwise you are kidding yourself if you believe a software setting is better than the real thing.

Filters may be even more "mandatory" for video due to the heavier processing video receives, but it is equally beneficial for still. They are not well known simply because of the widespread use of strobes. I also don't agree that digital still cameras have a wider white balance range than video. My VX-2000 has an incredible WB capability. It can WB through a UR Pro CY filter with halogen lights on a nite dive, then WB with ambient and the same filter at a 100 feet. I never remove the filter except when it is replaced with a diopter for macro.