Conventional (film) still images can/could be improved by adding colour filters to reduce the strong blue/cyan cast of clear water and, if the depth of water and strength of filter are chosen correctly, the results can be very impressive but what a conventional camera does not have is any way of adjusting colours “in” the camera. It merely records the light being presented to it...
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Digital still cameras are not, unfortunately, perfect and their white balancing capability is limited unless you buy a digital SLR.
Adding a URPro filter will give better colour down to as much as 60 feet/20 metres but, the biggest benefit is that you will not have to manually white balance each time. This involves going into menus, scrolling down and then performing the white balance. That isn’t too much bother if you stay at the same depth but go deeper or shallower and you will have to white balance again.
With a filter ...
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... reduces the light by just over one stop. This will mean a wider aperture or slower shutter speed. That reduction is not a big problem in shallower water but I found I had to change the 'film speed' to 400 to achieve sharper results. This produces shots with slightly more grain ('noise' in digital-speak) but, to be honest, I am a fan of this slight grain as I think it adds more atmosphere.
The second limitation is that the strength of filters such as the URPro mean that the cameras electronics can’t achieve a suitable white balance in...
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Believe it or not, this shot was taken at 18 metres with a URPro filter held on with tape between the Nikon Coolpix 5000 and the EC68 wide angle lens. I'm still considering a more elegant way to place the filter!
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