Hi!
I’m on my way to order a underwater housing for my Sony SR-11. I’m really confused about if I want a manual or electric housing. Have looked at Ikelite and Light and Motions Stingray HD so far.
How important would you say it is to access the manual white balance?

It would be quite annoying to spend all that money and then regret the housing…
Really would appreciate any tips or recommendations…

Regards

hello and welcome to digideep bakelitbrilla,

manual white balance is one of the most important features for underwater videography.
You need to do a white balance on almost any time when you change the depth and if you
change the directions. For sure it is more demanding, but you get much better results as
most camcorder are not very good with automatic white balance. So I would suggest to
look for a housing with manual white balance.

ciao Lars

Hi Lars,
Thanks! I was afraid that was the answer that would follow
The L&M;housing doesn’t allow that, and stepping up really costs a fortune. How much can you save in say post production?

I guess video isn’t like shooting stills with RAW where you can alter the white balance afterward…

are you sure that the Light & Motion housing doesnt support white balance. As far as I know
the bluefin housing allows access to the touch screen menu. In the touch screen menu you can
access the One-Touch White Balance. I’m not a video pro, but I guess this should be sufficient
to make a manual white balance.

/lars

The Bluefin does but the Stingray doesn’t…and I’m not shure of the Ikelite…

Well, you can adjust the white balance in post to a certain degree.
If you have MWB then you need to do it every time you change depth.
Otherwise the scenes would look different . AWB works quite well if you
use LED or HID as an light source.

I choose to go without AWB and most of the time I do not miss it at all.

At the very end it depends on your budget. More important features for me
are a good LCD monitor to judge focus and exposure and of course a
sufficient light system. If you choose Light&Motion;I recommend the Sunray
LED systems.

Manual white balance is a must if you want to make nice panorama shots !!!

Hi bakelitbrilla,

i was shooting videos with aWB, recently with mWB, both with Halogen and LED lights
My experience:
- doing macro with aWB with Halogen, no use to change colors in the post pro.
- doing macro with aWB with LED, you have to add much red color in the post pro

with mWB you don´t have to change colors at anytime.
Capturing underwater landscapes you will get the best/better results with mWB.

here´s some footage:
macro with aWB and Halogen: http://www.vimeo.com/2751390
macro with aWB and LED: http://www.vimeo.com/3919234

landscapes with aWB: http://www.vimeo.com/2884691
landscapes with mWB: http://www.vimeo.com/8666506