New Underwater Camera

[jeasko]

Red Filter
basically its a colour filter designed to work with underwater photography all it does is put the red back into the picture as this is the first colour in the spectrum to go, so even just a meter or 2 underwater the red starts to dissapear out of your pictures by adding a proper filter it will put the red back giving much better results. im sure somewhere on the net there are pictures with and without red filter so you can see the difference.

as for the built in flash it will work to a very small degree (depends on depth) as long as it has a diffuser in built to the housing but what you may get is a hot spot in the picture from where the flash is located and glare from particles in the water which can only be resolved by using an external flash, not sure how much you know about this subject but underwater the f stop is altered and the guide number for the flash has to be reduced to get an accurate effective length hence a bigger flash required under water, dont be surprised if a decent flash will cost you more than the camera but as its external to the rest of it if you change the setup you can still use the same flash, but dont get bogged down with this subject to much just yet go have some fun snapping away!

 

[raptorrex]

Ok now to burst the bubble a little! (sorry mate)
If you plan on using ur camera out on the GBR invest in a red filter as underwater the colour is absorbed by the water with red being first colour to go (hence red filter) and blue being the last colour (hence sea looks blue on a good day) this will work upto around 8-10m max depending on the sunlight beyond there you are getting into external flash etc which aint cheap no matter what country your in, and then gets beyond complex.
While your camera is rated to to 30m and you will get pics you will find a whole lot of blueness and a smidge of other colours at 30m this can occur even at 10m prob the best example is to look at a red star fish at 30m (18m if you newly qualified) and you will see it looks grey until you shine a torch on it, looks really wierd when you do this.
Having said that i started where you are and now own a full underwater set up including filters and sea and sea flash etc, if your interested get a book by a guy called martin edge on underwater photography as he explains it all so damn easily (if only it was that easy)

However love the pics of inside your tank it looks awesome maybe one day mine will have as much going on.

why bother with a red filter??? you simply correct the colour as has been stated, with photoshop. this means that there will be no loss of light till after the picture is taken. and there is little point in a filter if you use flash, as the flash will give off it own "red". in the day of the film camera it may have been worth it. but not after photoshop and its cloans came into the amature realm.

take my advice and just flash/click away, a little knowledge and some practice will do more than all the advice you have read here.