Filter Fulfilment 2

Alex Mustard · Issue 14, Aug/Sep 2003 · pp. 42–47

Products mentioned: Nikon D100, Subal housing, Kodak Wratten filter, URPRO filter, Adobe Photoshop Camera Raw

42 Back in UWP 11 Peter Rowlands wrote “Filter Fulfilment” an article encouraging us to use coloured filters as the alternative approach to using flash to get colourful underwater images. My aim in this follow up article is not to convince you that this technique works with before and after shots; PR’s article convinced me! Here, I plan to go into a bit more detail and pass on some of my ideas about how to get the best out of this technique of combining coloured filters with a digital camera. Colour compensating filters have been used in underwater still photography for many decades. Seek out a 1960s text and you will find lots of filter facts, but reading between the lines and it appears that filters were popular only because flash photography was, at best, temperamental and at worst, darn dangerous! Even the most experienced users of filters would struggle to get the exact colours they…