Video lighting

[shelbyrose]

Hi folks--after some more advice from you all regarding video lighting. I'm using two backscatter MW4300, which I haven't yet used much and trying to figure out the best approach. They're not really powerful enough for wide angle lighting, so I have mainly been doing ambient light for that, but I'm interested in using them more for fish portraits/macro/night.  I have three primary questions:

1. Is it best practice to turn lights on and off each time you set up a shot? I'm finding it somewhat fiddly to turn them on (I can turn the lights on at the beginning of a dive and then just dim them until they go off, so it's not like it's a ton of button presses but still...), though it might just be that I'll get faster at it with practice.
2. I had a lovely encounter with a moray eel in Belize on a previous trip and he seemed totally unbothered by my video lights. But yesterday I tried lighting a moray eel in the Red Sea, and they clearly didn't like it. Is there any guide to who doesn't mind video lights and who does?? 
3. Night dives--my lights have a red setting, which I believe is intended for use at night. Anyone have any thoughts on best practices for using video lights for night diving specfically? And similar to question 1, can I leave them running in lieu of using a torch (or in addition)?

 

Many thanks, as always, for your thoughts!

 

Shelby

[DreiFish]

1. Personal choice, but with more powerful video lights, you kinda have to turn them off in between shots or you'll run out of charge after one dive. It's.. a learned skill, but definitely slows you down and can lead to missing shots. This is where ergonomics like on the Keldans really do help -- as do lights that have a 'remote control' of some sort (again, Keldans!) and can both be turned on from the camera handle rather then reaching out to each one of them to turn them on. 

 

2. Especially with more powerful lights (15k lumens+) there are many subjects that are bothered by them. One limitation in using continuous lights vs strobes.

 

3. Red lights are for focusing for still shots where the subject will be lit by strobes. You can't really use them for video. 

[bghazzal]

 

I think you'll get used to the buttons on the MW4300, and would definitely turn them off by dimming (it's only 3 presses, right?) between shots for battery life, and also critter and other diver comfort.

 

On the red light, it can also be useful to use if you're getting swarmed by bugs at night - not sure how it is in Egypt, in some places with rich water it can get pretty insane.
While you won't be filming with it, it can be a good standby mode at night, as the red spectrum is supposed to attract less zooplancton or whatever the swarming wormy things are...
 

 

10 hours ago, DreiFish said:

2. Especially with more powerful lights (15k lumens+) there are many subjects that are bothered by them. One limitation in using continuous lights vs strobes.

To gracefully sidetrack on this - did you notice any difference in behaviour when using ambient filters the light - I did (for medium small subjects like seahorse and small octopuses), but haven't done enough testing to see if it's just the diminished filtered light power or actually the fact that the spectrum is brought closer to ambient sunlight at depth.

Could be imagining things and it's just the dimming, but it would be worth looking into for video-light shy critters....

Edited June 16 by bghazzal

[shelbyrose]

Thanks for this helpful advice, both! All makes sense 🙂 

[SwiftFF5]

FWIW, I use my video lights on low setting as my lights for night dives, but I add a couple of extra older, retired lights as backups, just in case I run into a problem.

 

[Nikolausz]

I switch my lights at the beginning of the dive and decrease the intensity to 3% (or 0). Before approaching the subject I increase the intensity of the lights. Previously I had to reach out to the end of the arms but now, I can control the lamps from the grip. I use a WeeFine system utilising fibre optic remote control. It's actually more useful than I thought before.