hi all... steve here, living in sint maarten...not new to digital photog but new to the underwater part. bought a olympus stylus 300 and case and went diving the other day... shot 150 pics as a test and experiment and learned a bunch of stuff... but basic first question is...whered the colors go ? all the pics look as if shot thru a tourquise filter... and yes i know the water is that color BUT sinince i can see the yellows , reds and oranges in the fish etc, why can't the camera ? the yellow in my fins shows up as bright yellow... but yellow sripes on fish disappear... and no reds or oranges at all and indigo fish just look black...water depth was only 40 ft but was a bit of overcast day but still...if my eyes can see the color why can't the camera... ? e mail direct if you want stevesxm@stmartin.com
The depths are stealing your colours and you are seeing colours that arent actually there. Your eyes see a tiny bit of red and since your brain being the genious it is, knows that there is supposed to be more so your brain uses its creative license and amplifyes the red untill it looks like what it thinks the world should look like. The camera can do the same thing. It is called White Ballace or WB. If your camera has a manual WB mode you can use it to add the colour back in. To do this you take a picture of something white(or gray) and then tell the camera to use that picture to define white. This all assumes that there is any red left wich is only true very shallow water, in deeper water there will be no red left and there is nothing your camera or your brain can do to get it back. So in deeper water the only way to get the colours back is to use a strobe.
Now the reason your fins, look so bright yellow is because they are painted with a florescent paint. The paint absorbs blue light(which there is plenty of at any depth) and converts it into yellow light which it then emits.
