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Colours!
Getting from A to B
is as easy as 1,2,3
by Gordon Sammut
pictures by
Paul Duxfield |
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How many times have underwater pictures been ruined by a dire
lack of colours, exotic subjects tainted by a strong bluish hue,
which from the background swallows everything in otherwise excellent
shots! Surely the most arduous task divers face when they have
a camera is getting the colours in their pictures right. Many
divers who go on diving holidays are all too familiar with the
outcome in picture A. This article illustrates how getting the
colours right can be done in three easy steps. If you follow
these suggestions, you too will be able to move from A to B using
your digital compact camera. Picture B has been by shot on a
compact, without the use of a strobe, in 28 metres of seawater! |
1. Use Your Manual White
Balance
Do not be put off by the apparent complexity of this procedure.
With some practice, it will become as second-nature as inflating
and deflating your BCD. You do not need a degree in photography
to benefit from this technique. And if you are a certified diver
already, then you already have the required intelligence to master
this procedure. Taking a manual white balance reading takes no
more than thirty seconds, and it works a treat. It will eliminate
those annoying blues which dominate your pictures by shifting
the colours to their proper place. The technical explanation
of how this happens is beyond the scope of this article. How
to make it work is what is important here.
Taking the reading
The steps to take a manual white balance reading are model specific,
so the following guidelines serve as a general illustration.
For the exact procedure consult your camera’s user manual.
You need to put the camera in manual mode. Access the main menu
and scroll to WB, for White Balance. You will likely have the
‘Auto’ option, a few presets such as ‘Cloudy’,
‘Sunlight’, and a symbol with two small triangles on
the bottom and a circle or square on top. That is the manual
white balance symbol. Access that and point the camera at a white
object. Take a reading, then take the picture. The white object
can be a slate, sand, or more conveniently the palm of your hand.
Do this ideally before every picture, or more likely every few
metres on the way down and on the way up. The more the better.
Once you practice this for a while, it becomes second-nature,
and will take only a few seconds, especially if your camera’s
menu can be customised, or accessing it requires pressing just
one button. Be aware that some cameras also take a manual white
balance reading after, rather than before, you take a picture.
Also, be aware that not all cameras offer a manual white balance
option. If your camera doesn’t, all is not lost, but that
is a topic for another article. And when you upgrade camera,
make sure to get one which offers this feature.
2. Exposure Compensation
This is even easier than manual white balance. Find the black
and white square with a plus and minus signs in it. This will
get you to a scale, the positive side of which increases brightness,
the negative side decreases it. Because of the nature of ambient
light underwater, brightness needs to be decreased the closer
you are to the surface. You will most likely find it useful to
decrease by two-thirds or one-third in bright tropical waters,
but this depends on the conditions.
3. Wide-Angle lenses
You should grab a wide-angle
lens for your compact as soon as you can. The benefits of
wide-angle underwater are enormous. What a wide-angle lens will
do is increase the angle of coverage (I told you it’s not
difficult). Other than allowing you to get more into your picture,
or frame big pelagic animals, it will allow you to get closer
to your subject. Given that light degrades underwater, the greater
the distance light has to travel from your subject before reaching
your lens, the greater the loss in sharpness, clarity and colour.
A wide angle lens made it possible to get the diver and the crocodile
fish sharp in the same picture. Without a wide-angle lens, you
would need to be further back, otherwise the subject will not
fit in the frame, and the best you’d get is a sharp picture
of the diver. |
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