White balance with actinic lighting?

[freezetyle]

How do you adjust the white balance on your photos to get rid of the overly blue hue?

I tried adjusting it on my camera (only a point and shoot Nikon S620) but the photos still look a little too washed out. Any tips?

[kien]

Throw your photo into an editor like Photoshop (although just about any decent photo editor should work) and adjust the white balance to something warmer. Most editors will have a temperature scale in the Kelvin rating. YOu can usually directly set the temperature number you want or use their handy dandy slider to adjust the temperature up and down. If your tank is typically blue (12-22K) this is considered a cooler temperature (within photography), then you'll want to adjust your photo so that it is within the warmer range of the scale. Higher color temperatures (5,000 K or more) are called cool colors (blueish white); lower color temperatures (2,700–3,000 K) are called warm colors (yellowish white through red).

[OceanicCorals-Eugene-]

does your camera have a custom white balance function? if it does, point it at a white surface when your actinics are on and it should be able to adjust it but would end up looking very similar to daylight photo

[Albertan22]

Originally Posted by OceanicCorals-Eugene-

does your camera have a custom white balance function? if it does, point it at a white surface when your actinics are on and it should be able to adjust it but would end up looking very similar to daylight photo

+1

I put a white dinner plate into my aquarium and use the manual white balance setting to get it right. Once that's done, the photos look much better.