Tag: olympus tg6

White balance is one of the principal camera settings or functions we need to understand in order to bring out the natural colors of the reef and our fishy friends. What is the white balance you ask? Well, in the most simple terms, white balance is a setting included on all digital cameras, usually indicated with a “WB”, which changes the overall color of the picture to accommodate different lighting environments. For example, a land photographer would change the white balance settings when they move from shooting in a sunny outdoor environment to an indoor environment lit entirely with fluorescent light. For us underwater shooters, we adjust the white balance to account for a loss in the red wavelength as we go deeper underwater. If you do not adjust your white balance your images will come back in shades of blue and green when they should be coming back with a full spectrum of colors. How do we correctly set our white balance? Let me explain. Underwater Auto Shooting Modes As I said, as we dive deeper underwater we start to lose certain colors, most importantly red. With this in mind, we need to try to account for this loss of red by utilizing our camera's built-in digital red filter, which is controlled through the white balance function. Many cameras like newer models of GoPro or the Olympus TG series—some of the most user-friendly cameras for snorkelers and divers—will have pretty fantastic auto-white balance settings for underwater shooters. For GoPro users, you'll just need to switch the white balance setting into Auto and just let the camera do its thing. In my experience, and from what I've seen from our guests using GoPros, the colors come back very accurate. For the Olympus TG folks, simply turn the little dial on