Videography tips and Techniques

Issue   1    Tip 2

Color

Where to start… Physics! Understanding refraction and absorption.  The light spectrum from Red to Violet. When entering the water column, you will notice one of the first colors to disappear is red. Red or green/blue are common filter colors to compensate for the loss of a spectrum of colors lost by water absorbing the wavelength of that color. For example, if looking through the lens with a red filter, from 5 feet of depth things will appear reddish. Continue down the water column and that red you see begins to disappear and the objects begin to appear more natural in color. Red or something close to red is a very common filter. Looking at the graph on the right ->>
you see at around 15 feet, you begin to loose red.  The farther down the
water column you descend, you begin to loose Orange, Yellow, green, blue and so on. As you develop your diving habits, you will come to learn what filter to use and or/carry with you during the dive. Using a filter allows the lost color to be brought back into the camera as light passes through the filter through the lens. If your housing allows you to change filters at depth, my filter is internal to the housing, find a location where you may stay stationary. Take video without a filter, then with a red filter, a pink filter, a blue/green filter, etc. When on the surface, review the video to see which one of the filters produced the best picture. You now have a base to work from. Note, filters are not enough though. At the beginning of the dive, if capable  set the white balance. I’ll cover White balance in another post.

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