Question: custom white balance & canon digicam

Hello all,

This is my first post here. Sorry if my english is not perfect, I'm spanish .

I'm shooting with a Canon S-45 (4MP) + 2 sea & sea YS strobes with Mr.Heinrich's TTL Adapter. My camera allows RAW and JPG.

I have a problem when shooting jpg - ironically this is for u/w photo contest, where I should show my best photos. As raw + adjutment is not allowed for the time being, we have all to shot jpg .... in my case 'yellow-red color cast' jpg's

There is sometimes a warm color cast with auto white balance setting that I would like to eliminate in flash photography. I tried also in 'flash' white balance mode, but again same problem.

I tried with a PVC white board and custom white balance during the dive ... again yellow/red cast.

Here you have an example:

(1) What I got shooting with 'custom' white balance using a white plastic board during dive :

(2) Playing with photoshop: this is how it should be (more or less like I remember the scene):

In Inon web page, I read that Canon gives intentionally this 'warm' cast ... they sell a blue diffuser. I tried, made my-own blue filter to put between my flash & diffuser but not still happy - I lost a lot of flash power (up to two f-stop) and now I got blue-green cast

My questions are:

1 - May I improve results using as a target a 'yellow' or 'reddish' plastic card?

2 - Why doesn't work - specially in macro mode - custom white balance with a white plastic card underwater?

3 - Unfortunately my canon powershot has not the detailed white balance settings that olympus have ... does any canon powershot user have any trick to get good flash shots whithout-warm-cast?

4 - In order to set custom white balance ... can I use digital zoom in order that small-sized white reference fills all screen? Or it doesn't work and have to use bigger white cards? If I can use digital zoom, I would fill the screen with just 1 inch of 'white card' reference. Maybe I could use underwater a type of color reference cards like the wall painters use. They are made of solid plastic and have a lot of color tones to test.

Many thanks in advance for your time and co-operation,

Regards

Hello,

Your english is excellent.

What you want to set is the white balance while using your FLASH, right? So custom white balancing using ambient light will not work.

I have used the Inon diffuser w/ the Canon cameras and I highly recommend you purchase one. It does not "use" much light, maybe 1/2 of a stop.

Hope this helps,

James Wiseman

Hello,

Thanks for your quick answer.

Yes I would like to set white balance while using my flash.

I can set custom white balance with flash, pressing some key while doing it, there is a short flash and it's done.

I think that inon diffuser will not fit on the sea & sea strobes ...

Then, do you think that using a 'redish' or 'yellowish' card to set the white balance will help?

Thanks in advance,

Daniel

Sea & Sea should make diffusers for their strobes. I know my YS-90DX and YS-90Auto both came with a diffuser. You should be able to search online for vendors that sell Sea & Sea products and determine if they will sell you a diffuser to fit your strobe.

I think james was trying to say that you should set your custom white balance using your flash. You stated in your followup post that you can do this. Have you tried to set the white balance using your flash? If you did, does it still give you that reddish cast to your photos?

Sea & Sea should make diffusers for their strobes. I know my YS-90DX and YS-90Auto both came with a diffuser. You should be able to search online for vendors that sell Sea & Sea products and determine if they will sell you a diffuser to fit your strobe.

Yes, they make it. I have two, one for the YS-90 and other for the YS-60. They are made of white plastic. In Inon web, they sell blue blastic diffusers to compensate warm cast, but sea & sea is not offering that type of product

I think james was trying to say that you should set your custom white balance using your flash. You stated in your followup post that you can do this. Have you tried to set the white balance using your flash? If you did, does it still give you that reddish cast to your photos?

Yes, I did it. In fact first photograph shown is using the custom white balance with flash. I had with me a plastic white card during the dive, and adjusted it twice. You can see the clear reddish cast ... is not better than using the auto white balance mode.

Regards

In water when you user the ambient light without your strobes light to set the WB there is a lot less red light color then usual, when you shoot with your strobes that their light contains a normal amount of red light (mas o meno) you get a frame with wrong WB that shift to the red colors.

I found the ‘shadow day’ WB to be the best with my S50 and S&S YS-25.

In water when you user the ambient light without your strobes light to set the WB there is a lot less red light color then usual, when you shoot with your strobes that their light contains a normal amount of red light (mas o meno) you get a frame with wrong WB that shift to the red colors.

 

I found the ‘shadow day’ WB to be the best with my S50 and S&S YS-25.

Thanks, I have 'homework' for this weekend's dive

Let's see how works the 'shadow day' WB setting ...

Regards,

Daniel.

Have you taken a picture of your white card after setting custom the WB? Does it look white?

If it does look white, then the problem is your white card. It might be more blue than you thought. If it looks redish you may not be setting the custom WB correctly or the required wb is out of the range the camera is capible of...