Color in underwater video helps dictate the mood, creative aesthetic, and overall impact of the footage. This is particularly important on social media, where you may have less than a second to hook the viewer.

This color needs to be captured correctly in-camera, since most recorded video is captured in a compressed format that leaves little room for adjustment during post-processing. Ideally you can use filters and camera settings to bring red and other colors back into the scene while removing the blue/green color cast.

Red filters are popular with smaller cameras, but most divers using larger systems tend to rely on manual white-bal- ance settings. Smaller cameras often have underwater scene modes or a manual color-temperature adjustment to set white balance. Larger cameras require use of a white-balance card to create a custom white balance for the scene.
Using a white-balance card varies by camera, but generally you should first make set your exposure settings and lighting for the scene. Next, hold the white-balance card in front of the camera so it fills a significant portion of the frame and take a still photo. In your manual white balance setting, select custom white balance. The camera will ask to use the photo you just took as a white point reference. Click OK. Finally, exit the menu and you will see the updated picture in your LCD screen.

Pro Tip: If the color doesn’t look quite right, try shooting the white-balance card again and going through the custom white-balance process with the new ref- erence image.