White Balance

[Big Brother]

I have a good camera (by no means a SLR) and am having a little trouble adjusting the white balance. It has an auto adjust where you just point the camera at whatever you want to register as white and it will pick it up. So i used my substrate and for the most part it worked awesome! But, i get alot of yellow glare off the sand when taking FTS.

Anybody know the best way to adjust it?

[afitzwater]

this might help

http://books.google.com/books?id=wW6PVQhK09QC&dq=adjusting+the+white+balance+on+a+camera&pg=PA103&ots=I1QWSzaHVn&sig=xaERFJuT4Vk_GQBBw33hY-yOQbA&prev=http://www.google.com/search%3Fhl%3Den%26q%3Dadjusting%2Bthe%2Bwhite%2Bb alance%2Bon%2Ba%2Bcamera%26btnG%3DGoogle%2BSearch&sa=X&oi=print&ct=result&cd=1&cad=legacy

[Daniel]

Not sure if this helps... but check out this site if you haven't already:
http://www.ximinasphotography.com/lessons/index.html
One of the most comprehensive "guides" for taking pictures of things concerning our hobby.

Lesson on White Balance:
http://www.ximinasphotography.com/lessons/lesson04/lighting_2.html#White%20Balance

[Dakota]

White balance in a fish tank is undesirable. The ocean does NOT look good when it's white balanced for 5500 kelvin (which is what traditional daylight "film" is balanced for (even in digis). Your best bet is to get a calibrated monitor (or at least one that you know displays proper colors), and then use photoshop, or other software to adjust the color curves to reveal the color the fish (or coral, or whatever) is supposed to look like. Underwater marine shots will look bluish on a white object, and because of this a camera cannot "auto white" balance and make it look good. It will end up VERY yellow if you were to actually white balance a neutral part of the scene. I've noticed that the best pictures I've gotten in marine tanks (freshwater is much different, more yellow) have been at a color temperature of 8000K (for the lighting that was on one particular tank). Other tanks with different lights will have different results for the same fish. Feel free to PM me with any questions, as I have some experience and expertise in this area (photographer at Brooks) :-D

~Eric

[jharr]

Wow, talk about a con o' worms! White balance, monitor/printer calibration and color management in general is a HUGE topic. Best off reading a book or some professional source online. Skip Photoshop though and download GIMP for free from http://gimp.org. You can do all of your color adjustments with this tool just as easily as you can with PS. If you are able take photos in RAW format with your camera, do so and import to GIMP with CFRAW (also a free download). This tool allows you to do some curve adjustments as a stand alone as well. It will also convert your RAW photos to TIFF or jpeg format. I have ben using it with my Nikon D70s and it makes all the difference in post processing.

Good luck,
J--