Stevie_W wrote:Hi
This is a bit of a technical question.
How do camera filters work?
I have a Wingman with underwater casing. It's great for taking action shots and videos when i go paintballing. But when i try to use this underwater, a lot of the colours go and all the photos and videos come out almost all blue.
I was told that if i got a filter for this then that should fix some of the colour issues i'm getting. However, so far, I can't seem to find a filter for the Wingman on line and i've had no responses from them when i emailed them to see if they had such a thing.
So what i'm trying to do is try to find out how these filters work and see if i can produce a home made version........i mean would it be as easy as just putting a piece of transparent red paper over the lens? or somewhat much more complicated than that?
Cheers
When you go underwater, the deeper you go, the more red and yellow you lose because those wavelengths are absorbed by water.
Ideally, you'd want to bring your own light source. You can make do with a jerry-rigged filter but you risk adding another layer where light is lost before it reaches the camera's sensor.
Your best bet would be to increase light entering the sensor, either via a larger aperture or higher ISO. Slower shutter speed would also do but you risk blurrier pictures.
You can then adjust the colors in post processing where you can play around with the image's color balance with software such as Photoshop or GIMP. Not sure with video though (I don't take as much video as I do stills).
If you want to adjust colors in situ, you can also fiddle with your camera's white balance and lean towards the 'hotter' temperatures (e.g. "cloudy" setting) before taking those underwater shots.
