Underwater photography and colour

The above image shows the colours of the spectrum at roughly 25 meters below the surface on a very good clear day.

I tried the white balance sampler in Adobe Camera Raw but to no avail. I then used the colour temperature slider. I adjusted it by approximately 7000 degrees Kelvin to get to this. Not perfect and somewhat cool but reasonably close.

If you live in the Maldives, Bali or some other Pacific Ocean island, you are probably used to very clean water.

If this is the case this article is not for you.

For those of us diving in non-exotic dive locations there are some challenges.

OK, let us be fair. Even crystal clear water loses colour at depth. That is a law of nature and it is one of those things we must live with.

In sequence of light wavelength and starting with red, colour disappears with depth. Now I am not going into scientific issues here. Our learned friend Mr Google will present many options for those wishing to know the detail.

Should you dive in clean water during daytime you are fine up to about 10 meters. Yes, some red or orange filters will help a lot but you should be OK. You can also perform these colour corrections in Photoshop if you do not wish to carry filters.

The fun starts when you go deeper. I have a good friend and fellow photographer, Mardee Maree. He is VERY good with Photoshop and lots of other things. You can see his work here.

He has played with some of my underwater images. He achieved some amazing results but not even he could overcome the laws of nature.

Not having Mardee's skills I tried the basic approach.

The image below is as it was off-camera, only resized.

The image below is corrected in Adobe Camera Raw by sampling the white balance pick tool on the white flash diffuser. Hardly nice.

There is a very simple solution. Take some lighting with you.

Now there are vast numbers of options available to underwater photographers. The classic flash is available with dozens of modifiers and gadgets. Prices range from cheap to very expensive.

Constant lighting presents even more options. Here you can choose between narrow beams and wide beams. Constant lights also come with many options for modifiers. Well, the better ones do anyway.

I lean towards constant light. This is purely because I like macro and extreme close-up images. I also started shooting more video footage.

Flash is wonderful but it can't keep up. Even the best flash, and no I refuse to call them strobes, will take more than a second to recycle between shots. Flash is also quite useless for video footage.

Lighting is a very personal thing though. I have some underwater flashes and constant lights by Inon. They are great pieces of gear and I will use them again.

My weapon of choice is the LumeCube. They are small, lightweight and amazingly powerful. Modifiers are being developed for them and will be available soon. That makes the LumeCube even more attractive.

You can get them from a local photographic retailer you support. In my case that would be Katz... or you can get them here directly.

Now, if only the weather fairies will play along I can go diving and show you more.

Happy shooting and take care!

Anton.