Magic Filter test

Mike Veitch · Issue 27, Nov/Dec 2005 · pp. 41–44

Products mentioned: Magic Filter, Nikon D70, Aquatica housing, 10.5mm wide angle lens

Magic Filter test by Mike Veitch When Alex Mustard first announced the Magic Filter I was pretty excited as I was in the market for a red filter for my newly purchased 10.5mm wide angle lens. I was interested in a red filter because I wanted to experiment with the manual White Balance option that a digital SLR offers. As a full time underwater image maker, a lot of my work involves video and in the realm of underwater video, the red filter is king. When shooting video without lights and manually white balancing off a slightly off white slate, rich saturated colour can be captured from further away than what can be obtained using strobes on a still camera. I was interested in putting the Magic to the test and seeing what it could do when used in situations that it wasn’t necessarily designed for. A few of the ideas I wanted to test were: shooting into the sun, shooting on the surface (spl…