white balance, ISO and actinic shots

[jacksonpt]

I've got a point and shoot sony (DSC-T100). I don't have a problem getting good, clean, sharp pictures, but I have a terrible time with the color balance, especially under actinic lighting only - Everything is VERY blue and not remotely close to what my eye sees. I assume this is a white balance issue?

It doesn't have a true manual white balance adjustment, but it's got a few pre-set options for white balance. I've played around with them and they don't seem to make much of a difference.

I'm pretty decent with photoshop, but the pictures are so poor that there isn't much I can do without noise becoming an issue. Could it be an ISO problem?

I know I'm limited by my camera, but I could get pretty decent actinic shots with my old P&S sony. Any ideas/suggestions? Here is a sample - it's linked to the full size image right off my camera.

http://bingweb.binghamton.edu/~jtaylor/pictures/bbs/sample-small.jpg (http://bingweb.binghamton.edu/~jtaylor/pictures/bbs/sample-full.jpg)

[kmoze2001]

Will your camera shoot RAW? Then you can adjust in post, and whatever limitations the camera might have become irrelevant.

[jacksonpt]

Unfortunately, no.

[Recty]

Can you post up a picture that you havent edited at all? I'll download it and work with it a little bit and see if I can help ya.

Basically, take a picture with your camera that shows the least amount of blue or looks the most true to life, then without any changing in PS upload it and I'll try to help. If you want :)

[jacksonpt]

That's what the picture is above... right off the camera. The only things on the camera I set were ISO80 (which I should probably play around with a bit) and the most natural looking WB setting (don't remember what it was).

[Recty]

Well then I guess I cant help ya much ;) I looked at it last night from home with CS4 and was able to adjust the white balance SOME but it still doesnt look natural. I thought maybe you had tweaked it already in Photoshop.

[TitusvileSurfer]

Use ISO 100 as opposed to ISO 80. Only use ISO 80 if you have too much light to work with. I can't imagine that ever being the case photographing a reef.

[OwenInAZ]

On my camera (Olympus Stylus) there's a function to change what type of light bulb is providing illumination. Playing around with that went a long way towards better pictures for me. I'll bet there's a similar setting on yours.

[luisgo]

Like others are saying there should be a white balance setting in your camera. I use auto white balance in my Nikon D60 and adjust the colors in Photoshop.

Your picture is very blue and maybe is also a problem with your lighting. The best photos are shot when white light is used in the 10K range.

Here is the best I can do with your photo.

http://img51.imageshack.us/img51/3254/samplefull.jpg (http://img51.imageshack.us/i/samplefull.jpg/)

[kmoze2001]

This is a little better, but it's going to be difficult to get it perfect. You could print a color card, laminate it and photograph it submerged in the tank to give you perfect black and white points which would correct even the worst WB mismatch. Absent that, white balance is very hard to fix, I did this by picking random spots on the sand as the white point (Levels, White Eyedropper) until I found one that worked best. But it's not perfect.

http://nykevin.smugmug.com/Aquariums/Fish-Tank/Untitled-1/804907889_isb9z-L.jpg