TMM1982

Hey folks,

Will be in Bora Bora in about 10 days. Have my Go Pro and underwater stick to hold it and get some good pics.

Question I'm struggling with : Do I need a red light filter? The diving will be fairly shallow, water very clear. I'm thinking no but wanted to ask anyway.

Thanks.

Loren Pechtel

I would not be inclined to use any sort of color filter these days. Shoot it as natural as possible and fix things afterwards if need be. Filters on the camera lose data.

(Note: I'm not objecting to all filters. Polarizers act on information that's not recorded in the frame and thus couldn't be fixed afterwards. Neutral density filters simply let you use a slower shot to introduce motion blur into a shot that otherwise wouldn't have it. UV filters likewise have an effect that isn't recorded in the film in the first place. If you can't shoot multiple shots then I can see a reason for a graduated neutral density filter.)

abmj-jr

I would be more inclined to take a color reference wheel or grey card and include it in a test shot. The you can correct exactly in post-processing.

tentseller

My mini-Macbeth colour checker should work underwater. Don't know about others.

TMM1982

What's a color reference wheel? lol I'm not a photographer at all. I just want some cool selfies under the water with the sharks. But I'd like to capture the beauty of the water as well.

BOSOGG

no filter advice, but....

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/trip-...a-getaway.html

Loren Pechtel

I've never seen it as a wheel.

The simplest thing is a grey card: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gray_card which is just what it sounds like--a piece of gray material. To get greater accuracy there are also color charts: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_chart .

The point of these is to have something in the frame of an exactly known color. If you know the card is 18% gray then you adjust the color balance of the shot (the good editing tools will understand how to figure this with little effort) so that the image of the card really is 18% gray--and thus correcting everything else in the process.

The color targets allow correcting for a greater degree of discrepancies and are quite useful for calibrating color-handling equipment. Take a standard color target and make a scan of it. If the numbers in the scan aren't spot on you know the scanner is off and by how much--you create a color profile for the scanner that corrects for these things. Once your scanner is calibrated you can print a test pattern on your printer and scan it, this will find the discrepancies in the printer and allow the creation of a correction profile for it.

abmj-jr

It sounds like the OP doesn't post-process photos, just shooting jpeg and using the camera image. If that is the case, having a true color target isn't going to help much.

You might check to see if your camera has a "picture setting," or whatever your particular camera manufacturer calls it, for underwater shooting. The object would be to offset the blue shift caused by the water. If all else fails, I might try setting the camera for sunset, which should redden up the images a bit, or use the custom color setting to shift the Kelvin temperature to the red a little. If you won't be adjusting the images after the fact, it will probably come down to trial and error.

TMM1982

okay thanks guys for the recommendations and insight, much appreciated

boydphotographer

No filter is best especially because it restricts amount of light coming in and you definitely don't need that underwater. Shoot it in raw instead of Jpeg if possible (raw is uncompressed). That will give you the most ability to get it right after. You can play with the exposure a lot more and color of a raw image.

abmj-jr

If the OP will post-process his images, Raw is a good idea for more control. Since it seems he does not intend to do post-processing, shooting in Raw would be a mistake.

WilcoRoger

Famous last words

stingray072

I've seen some shots with the red filters-seems like they can really make a huge difference though no personal experience

TMM1982

For people in shallow clear water or deep water? Everything I've read leads me to believe it won't be necessary for 10-15 feet deep

TOMFORD

I vote filter. My snorkeling shots with GoPro without filter look awful. And they're not RAW files so you don't have a lot to work with in terms of colors.