Wondering why your photos under water looks more blue than it should? Or looking to add a little extra flair to your underwater photos? This article talks about filters for underwater photography, what they do, and which ones you should consider, but there are courses you can take with PADI on underwater photography specifically if you’re looking for practical hands on instructions.

If you’re interested in scuba diving in general and had a few questions, check out our Amateur Hour, where we discuss all things scuba diving!

Colour and Light Theory

First of all, we need to a basic understand of how lighting works and how it works under water. In colour theory, we have Red, Greens, and Blues (RGB), or in light theory, Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Key (CMYK). “Key” is the combination of CMY, thus making the “colour” appear “black”. For our purposes, we’ll simply refer to the RGB hues.

On land, we perceive colour by the lack of colour an object holds. For instance, the colour red are actually red wave length reflecting back to us, because it is the colour that doesn’t get “absorbed” by the object.

Red light penetrates water differently, being the lowest strength light wave, it gets dispersed quickly and “absorbed”, if you will, by the water. So, practically, there is less “red” hues the further down you go in the water.

This becomes important when we’re talking about balanced colours in a photograph and looking at the white balance, post shooting. However, that discussion extends beyond the scope of this article.

Filters for Underwater Photography

Theoretically and pragmatically speaking, it’s quite simple. What color filter for underwater? The deeper you go under water, the more “red” hues you’ll need to replace for your colours and white balance. There is also a bit of a difference in fresh or salt water.

To replace the red, pink and magenta hues that are missing, all you have to do is simply add it! And in this case we’re adding it through the filter. Other means of adding colours is taking bright day time lighting underwater with you and illuminating the objects you’d like to photograph. Those kits can be quite expensive and bulky. Other ways to correct missing hues, one could use underwater photo filter app in post processing. And in the absence of that, filters can help, especially in places where you get a lot of light penetration, (ie not most Ontario lakes – ha!)

So now, the question begs, when to use magenta filter underwater? It’s not just magenta!

Rob breaks it down quite easily:

• Pink is for shallow water/snorkelling
• Magenta is for fresh water diving,
• Red is for salt water diving

What are some filters I can use?

In the video, Rob discusses using filters and compares and contrasts the different looks in each of the filters. He was using his GoPro underwater filters, specifically. However, there are several other products out there, and for your camera too!

To really understand how the underwater camera filters play into your underwater photography, check out our the Rob’s video on explaining how filters for underwater photography and videography is different than your usual photography!