manual white balance setting

Hi,

I just bought a second hand sony vx2000 in a light and motionhousing with the big wide angle.

The guy I bought it from told me to set shutterspeed to 1/50 sec, manual focussing and auto white balancing, because you can always do that in Adobe premiere.

I am going to Guadelupe next week and thought, would manual white balancing not be better? I would be in the same depht al the time(cage diving) would 1 time manual whitebalancing be enough?would you advise manual white balancing? I have a light grey plastic sheet would it do if I would hold it about 15cm in front of the lense and then set manual white balance or do you have another method?

What do you think about to set shutterspeed to 1/50 sec?

Until now I have only experience with the sony pc100 1 chip camera, where you could not do any manual settings and analog Photocamera shooting.

please could you give me some advice?

Rob

Hi Rob

I use manual WB all the time. I can't be asked to try and do it in post. I use a slightly off white card (slate) that i have attached to my housing with a retractable cord. It is very simple to hold it up in front of the lens and hit the WB button. I am usually very happy with the colours this gives me. Especially in shallow depths. But you might need to WB a couple of times if the lighting conditions or water clarity change during the dive.

With the sharks being so shallow i would point the camera somewhat up when you do this as you don't want that red tinge from the filter. I have my shutter at 60 but it depends on how strong the sunlight is when you are diving. I think Guadaloupe is fairly clear so you can probably up the shutter a bit from 50. But the shutter doesn't work quite the same in video as in stills, but the sunrays will still be somewhat sharper if you up it.

Manual focusing is usually pretty good, i set mine on infinity in less than ideal conditions but that means i can't use the zoom button at all. For the big boys you shouldn't need to zoom at all so putting it at infinity is nice and will avoid the focus search that sometimes occurs in turbid conditions

What manta boy said plus:

1/50 is ok for slow moving stuff and will maximize Dof. BUT if you want slow-mo sequences of faster subjects then you have to up the speed otherwise you just get blur on blur which makes for blurry blur blur. Obviously like Mike said, conditions dictate shooting.

As for AWB vs filter + WB, in general, filter +WB is better since you have more color to play with in color correction in post. However, for Guadalupe, you will be on the surface on near it (6ft under max if I remember correctly). just white balance to a light grey source or even the cage and you should be good to go. With the SWA, watch out for flare when the shark is in the sun.

Turn off AF unless the water is crystal clear and you have only one subject. MF to 3-4m away should do you nicely. Also remember to turn off OIS when you use the SWA as it will be confused and you'll get some funky vignetting.

Hallo,

first thank you very much for the very quick response.

Still I have a few questions:

1. would you advice to use the redfilter in this depth?

2. I also have the standard 80° WA would this give me less flare?

3.I stil don't know how far away from the lense you hold the greycard for manual white balancing?

4. because the sharks swim fast you would advice set shutterspeed to 1/60 or would you advice aotoshutterspeed?

5. I have a fingerprint on the housingsite of the lense, what do you recommand to get it away, I don't want to make any cratches on this very expensive lense?

Rob