Pamilacan Island: Dive Site - Sanctuary
Video taken: May 2025 | Camera Rig - DJI OSMO Action 4, 2 x 120 degree 5600Lm Video Lights
Seeing Differently: How Water, Light and Colour Affect Underwater Videography
Gaining an understanding of how water, colour, and light affect how scenes appear underwater will help you become a better underwater videographer. It’s not just about having the right gear — it’s about knowing how the environment itself changes what the camera sees.
Colours shift, contrast fades, and distances become harder to judge. But once you understand why that happens, you can start working with those changes and capture footage that brings back the true colours of the dive.
So what exactly causes colours to drain away, or makes things look closer than they are? It all comes down to how water behaves differently from air — how it bends, slows, and absorbs light. In the next section, we’ll break that down in a way that’s simple to grasp but essential to capturing better footage underwater.
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Light Refraction
The Science – Understanding Refraction: Light travels quickly in air, but as it enters water, it slows down by about 25%. This change in speed causes the light to bend — a phenomenon known as refraction. It’s the same reason a straw in a glass of water looks bent or broken: your eyes are seeing refracted light.
So how does this affect divers? Refraction occurs at the boundary between air and water — light bends when it moves from one medium to another with a different density. In this case, light travels from the water into the air inside your mask, causing objects to appear about 33% larger and 25% closer than they really are.
What about our underwater cameras? Refraction affects cameras in much the same way it affects your eyes. A flat lens port or front element acts like a dive mask: light travels from water into the air inside the housing and bends. As a result, subjects on your screen appear around 33% bigger and closer. The trade-off is a reduced field of view (FOV) — for example, a 120-degree FOV on land might shrink to around 90 degrees underwater.
How Depth Affects Light and Colour Underwater
As you descend, water absorbs light at different wavelengths and rates, causing colours to disappear gradually. Red fades first, followed by orange, yellow, and then green — leaving mostly blue and grey tones at greater depths. This is why underwater photos and videos often look washed out without artificial lighting or colour correction.
The table below shows how different colours vanish as depth increases:
| Depth (m/ft) | Light Lost (%) | Color Loss | Effect on Visibility |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0m (Surface) | 0% | No color loss | Full sunlight, all colors visible |
| 5m (16ft) | ~30% | Red disappears | Slight blue/green tint |
| 10m (33ft) | ~50% | Red & orange disappear | Scene looks cooler and dimmer |
| 15m (49ft) | ~60% | Orange fades, yellow starts disappearing | Water appears greenish-blue |
| 20m (66ft) | ~75% | Yellow is mostly gone | Blue and green dominate |
| 25m (82ft) | ~80% | Green starts fading | Only shades of blue remain |
| 30m (98ft) | ~85% | Green is almost gone | Everything appears dark blue |
| 35m (115ft) | ~90% | Only deep blue remains | Low visibility without lights |
| 40m (130ft) | ~95% | Blue tones darken | Very dim, artificial light required |
Key Takeaways: Managing Light & Colour
For underwater videography, most recreational divers will be using action cams. I use one myself, and these compact cameras offer impressive performance at affordable prices — capable of producing outstanding results. However, like all underwater gear, they have limitations, especially as lighting conditions change with depth, and they often need to be supported with additional tools or techniques to maintain image quality.
Refraction: Action cameras inherently have very wide fields of view (FOV), which helps offset the impact of refraction underwater. This allows you to get closer to your subject while still keeping it in frame — and being closer often results in sharper, more detailed images.
Light & Colour at Depth: The greatest impact on image quality underwater is the loss of light and colour as you descend. While sensor size does affect a camera’s ability to capture light, even high-end systems can’t fully overcome this degree of light loss without significantly compromising image quality.
The table below outlines the effects of depth and the adjustments that can be made to improve your footage.
| Depth (m/ft) | Natural Light Conditions | Recommended Adjustment | Why? |
|---|---|---|---|
| 0–5m (0–16ft) | Good natural light, minor colour loss | No filter or light needed | All colours still visible; ambient light is strong |
| 5–10m (16–33ft) | Red starts to disappear | Use a red filter | Restores warm tones lost at shallow depths |
| 10–20m (33–66ft) | Red & orange mostly gone | Use a red filter or video lights | Filters help in natural light; lights are better in darker areas |
| 20–30m (66–98ft) | Yellow and green fading | Video lights required | Filters are less effective; artificial lighting restores colours |
| 30m+ (98ft+) | Only blue tones remain | Strong video lights essential | Natural light is too weak; artificial lighting is the only option |
Conclusions
My underwater videography journey has been more of an evolution than a revolution. I started out — and still often shoot — with a DJI OSMO Action 4 in a simple dive case. With good diving skills and an understanding of the camera’s light limitations, I was able to spot opportunities and capture great footage — using no lights and no filters.
As my experience has grown — with hundreds of clips now behind me — I’ve moved on to using a basic camera rig with video lights. This simple change has unlocked a whole new level of control and image quality. With proper lighting, I can now restore colours lost at depth, reveal detail in shadowed areas, and make subjects really stand out.
Of course, there’s always more to learn and new techniques to try when it comes to managing light underwater. But the core message is this: get to know the camera you’ve chosen, grow into it — and most of all, be safe and enjoy the diving.
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