I have just got my self a Sea & Sea DX-400D Housing for my Canon EOS 400D. 
I noticed that the menu function is not accessible from the housing therefore
I can not set the custom white balance at different depths.  Any suggestions.

On the canons can’t you set the photo from photos you have taken ?

so if you do one dive with normal white balance ..  take a photo at the depth you will be going diving at the next day.
then before you get in the water you can set the white balance for that depth before the dive.

it’s not perfect, and will give less great results at other depths .. but will work i should think.
down side .. you have to open the housing between dives if on a boat.

it seems odd to me on what could be a very popular housing they didnt do as they always do and give you access to everything ..
i see there is one button what does that do ?

um .. other ideas ...
use a strobe and never do available light / filter photography
get custom buttons put in
send it back get another housing.

Thanks for the suggestions, the single button on the left is a playback button to review pictures.  I will probably be using natural light till no deeper than 12mtrs any how.  The other option I thought about was to shoot all my images in RAW and then correct the ones that need to be in post.

Getting custom buttons put in?  is this even an option?  if so any tips on who can do this for me?

I am flatered that Sea&Sea;skipped that button and still cannot believe that!
I think this is a mayor drawback on that housing. Can you really confirm it?

Hi Andreas

I was sufficiently startled by this to have a look at Sea and Sea’s website for confirmation.

On the Canon 400D, to set a custom white balance from a previously shot image (as Giles suggests), it is necessary to get into the Menu system of the camera, accessed with the ‘menu’ button, which is one button down from the top left hand corner of the LCD screen.

It’s not explicitly stated on the website, but there is a picture of the LCD part of the housing back on the Sea and Sea site :  Sea and Sea - LCD detail (small picture).  (this is from the following original page)

Close inspection of this picture reveals only one control on the left of the LCD, towards the bottom, which means there is no control for the Menu button, hence, no setting custom WB underwater with the Sea and Sea DX400.

The DX350 housing for the Canon 350D has multiple controls on the left side of the LCD, so it would seem that they could have put a control there.  Why they didn’t remains a mystery, but pretty frustrating if you like the Sea and Sea housing.

regards
Graham

it’s obvious from this .. it’s definately confirmed.
it’s mind blowing since they did it for every other Dslr and this camera hasnt changed that much since the 350.

who knows what they are thinking, maybe someone will let us know !

I would have suggested that you set the * button up to alter white balance using the custom button feature prior to the dive

but from the looks of it .. there is no access to the star button either ..!

this would be a big no no to me when buying the housing !

I had my self convinced that I would be able to correct the white balance in post using Adobe photoshop CS2.....but that too seems to be a problem as the EOS400D camera raw format presents a CR2 file adobe have made it clear that they will not support CR2 on CS2.....I feel like this is a conspiracy.....Giles, you mentioned that I do strobe photography as an option or work around....does this really compensate for the problems posed by incorrect white balance?

Any one interested in buying a brand spanking new DX-400D housing?????hahaha boo hoo hoo

Strobe will resolve the white balance problems to a large degree, because the strobe is a light source that is very close to the subject, so the light you are using for you shot has only travelled through a few metres of water, so only a small amount of the reds end of the visible spectrum will have been absorbed.  Ambient light (i.e. from the sun) will have travelled through the entire water column above you, which is why the ambient light has had the red end of the spectrum largely absorbed.

Thus when you are using the strobe, the colour temperature of the light is pretty consistent.  You will probably find that one of the pre-set white balances will look quite natural when using the strobe, or if not, you will be able to use a previously shot (with strobe) underwater picture to set the custom white balance.

Surely the 400D came with software that allows you to process the raw files?  I thought only Nikon made you pay for the software to do it!  I appreciate that the workflow is a bit of a drag, in that you can’t do it all in Photoshop, however, it would appear that the alternative is to upgrade you Photoshop CS3 so you can use the Camera Raw v4.2 plugin, which supports the new EOS40D, so I assume it supports the 400D.

Hopefully that makes sense!

Graham

Thanks mate, that makes me feel a lot more comfortable..and yes the camera came with the “Digital Photo Professional Software” I havent actually tried using it though, I’ve been quite used to photoshop.  Will take your advice on upgrading it to CS3.

Hi

I just checked adobe’s website, and the 400D is supported by the Camera Raw plug in as of version 4.1, which works with Photoshop CS3, so if you upgrade, you will be able to do your RAW processing in Photoshop without messing around with the Canon software.

cheers
Graham