So you've got your camera, and you've taken some great snaps, but you're finding that your pictures are tainted by a very strong bluish or greenish hue. You know strobes will help but you can't justify the bulk or the expense at the moment. You know about manual white balance, but you cannot be bothered with that underwater, or your camera does not do it. Give it all up? Don't. All you might need is a little old trick.

Actually, there is nothing magical about using an underwater colour correction filter. Filters have been used in photography for a very long time to create special effects. They are now being used underwater to remove the strong blues or greens from underwater pictures. These hues develop because of the colour absorption properties of water. What a filter does is provide an overlay of a different colour over the scene, which when combined with the blues or greens already present, neutralises the predominant hues in your picture. It will not restore colours as well as using a strobe, and it will only work well in the first fifteen metres or so, but it does neutralise the blues or greens and it creates a colour mix at depths where colours would have otherwise been lost. Check out the difference between the two pictures above!

So which filter do you need? There are filters which can screw to the front of your housing, such as ‘UR-Pro’ filters, and there are others which can be cut out and placed in front of the lens inside your housing, such as ‘Magic filters’. Then there are filters for blue water diving (CY), for tropical waters and the Med, and there are filters for green water (GR), for temperate water diving such as the UK. If you are not sure which one is best for you, give us a call so can we assist. But do not give it up before you try this little trick first.