Underwater photography differs from standard photography in many things, one of the most significant changes is the white balance.

Auto White Balance - Very Blue-ish

The water acts as a blue filter therefore chaging completely the natural color balance that we know above water. Most of todays digital cameras are not equipped with an underwater mode and are designed in software to adjust to white balanced that are common in our everyday life.

For the above reason , the auto white balance feature usually works poorly underwater and does not adjust the colors correctly to compensate on the strong effect of the blue or green water.

When choosing a camera to take underwater , it is very important to make sure it has a manual white balance mode , this mode will come in handy in almost every dive and will save you the hassle of going through photoshop for every photo taken.

The process differs between cameras but the general idea is to take a white or gray card (one that does not have a hue and is nuetrally balanced) , goto the cameras white balance setting and choose manual. You will then need to point the camer and the card and push the shutter button or a different button and the camera will determine the compensation it needs to do for this card to actually be neutral.

When diving , it is usually recommended to go through this process every 20 feet or so..

Manual White Balance