How to get the nice blue tone in the background?

Hi folks,

I'm new to u/w photography. I just got myself a Nikon CP-5200 with WP-CP2 housing. Most of the pics I took u/w turn out greenish except the ones I shot at about 1 feet away with internal strobe. How do I get the nice blue background that I see on many beautiful photos?

Really appreciate your help on this.

Oh, one thing though.. there's no manual setting on my camera. It has a

-2.0 to +2.0ev setting that increases/decreases exposure, spot/matrix metering.

I guess the simple answer is there is no answer.

As you said you have no manual controls, you are limited to what the camera thinks is right. Unfortunatly, the camera only knows what is right in air, and you have seen what it does underwater.

You could try using -2 ev, but I doubt that will help much.

If it has white balance settings, try all your options there too.

Of course, if you are in cold water, it does in fact look green, in many locations.

But if you are saying clear blue water looks green, then it must be auto white balance doing bad things...

Typically though, you want to force the flash always on, to get any real colors other than blues and greens, underwater.

Don

Try taking something pure white (like a dive slate) with you, and see if that has a greenish hue to it, both within the range of your flash, and a little outside of it (generally beyond 3' from the camera).

If the white object comes out pure white but the background has a green tint, it probably is the natural water color. But if the white object is greenish too, some of the metering in your camera may be off.

I do a lot of cold, freshwater shooting too - Don is right, it is green. (there is a good reason most of those gorgeous shots you mention are shot in the warm, pristine ocean!)

thanks folks for the replies.

i took the pics in tropical waters, specifically in malaysia. the fact is that the water do look greenish in actual form. however, i noticed that a guy in my same diving group managed to take pics with nice blue background in the green waters. that's why i'm curious. i asked him and he said he used a manual setting of 160 shutter speed.

yes, there's even a manual wb control in my camera. i'm yet to tune the wb to a white slate underwater. will that help? i'm currently using auto wb.

those objects that i shot in a close range (~1 foot) turns out OK. it's only those i shot with vast volumes of water at the background that turns out greenish.

i've attached some of the shots that i made. notice the greenish background. more comments are really welcome as i'm still learning this uw photography thingy.

here's another photo..

within 1 foot shot..

another one within 1 foot shot..

It's a white balance issue.

Wow, scorpio_fish!!

How did u fix that? Using Photoshop?

OK, if it's a WB issue, I'm glad coz at least that's something I can adjust.

So, what's the advice to get the proper WB? Bring a white slate down and let the camera learn the WB setting from the slate?

Appreciate ur advice.

mooncake. I would do a approximated Whitebalancing with a white slate and do the "Fine Work" in Photoshop or another Programm using Level Adjustments.

You can also use Auto WB and do all in The Software. Thats a matter of taste.

Simon

My guess is, you are using auto WB now, and getting the results you are.

Try daylight, or flash WB.

Just learn to try things, and see what you get.

If your camera has raw mode, shoot that, and set the WB on your computer, after the fact.

Don