Time to update decade old video lights.  In hand we have one Big Blue 4000lumen light with extra batteries.  How much longer will it last, who knows?  Its mate died awhile ago.  Budget is an issue so for wide angle video what do you think is better; two 4000lumen lights or one 10000 or 15000lumen light?  Her first love is shooting macro. Shooting a Canon Vixia GF50 in a Gates housing.  

 

Thoughts?

2 lights will always be better than 1 light for multiple reasons (flexibility, backscatter control, more even coverage of the area), so the clear answer would be two lights BUT if the main focus is macro, then a single light goes a long way.

 

Two 4000 lumen lights will not be useful for anything more than closeups / nightdives, but for macro it's perfect - especially if you get a well designed product like the Backscatter MW4300 - this is a really functionnal piece of kit, with a flood and spot mode (most of which can be used for macro or mid-range), really nice button setup and accepts the MS-10 optical snoot and filters if you're into that - it does however have one major flaw in my opinion which is a low CRI (70 range), which you can feel when pairing with higher CRI lights...

But I would still recommend this for macro video - to give some examples of mine, these macro clips are shot with a single MW4300 example one, two and three, as is this mid-range clip (worked, but 2 lights would have been even better)

 

However, if you're going for wide-angle video, then there's no way around it - get a pair of lights, and the most powerful you can afford (ideally constant output, so not Big Blue lights which are not constant output) - a single light will be really complicated to use for anything else than closeups (for which 2 lights would be better anyway).

I'd say a bare minimum for wide-angle would be 2x 8000 lumen lights, but most people will use a pair of 10K, 12K or 15K - there's no way around it because you need to cover a wide area, hence the need for two lights. And for this, don't fall for the retailer marketing hype, you actually want a tighter beam (say 90°) rather than a wider one (120°), because it will mean more light falling where it should be (on your subject).

Or you can work in ambient light for wide (manual white balance with a filter), and a pair of weaker lights for mid-range, closeups and macro, which is a good compromise.

You can mix the two approaches (ambient and artificial light) for wide angle by using ambient light filters on the lights and a filter on the camera to match both light sources (see Dreifish's the thread on the subject here), but filters halve your light output, hence the need for powerful lights to get results.
 

 

cheers
ben

 

Edited December 3, 2024Dec 3 by bghazzal

@aquabluedreams There are a couple of used 4000k Kraken lights on eBay. Here's a link to the cheaper of the two: https://www.ebay.com/itm/305857241328?_skw=kraken+video+light&itmmeta=01JE57NGQ0AY8MJYTJQCDM8GJJ&hash=item47368320f0:g:zJkAAOSwE7NnGV~Q&itmprp=enc%3AAQAJAAAA0HoV3kP08IDx%2BKZ9MfhVJKlDxTjXLweNgO3%2BZHdMs9k2WaPMOQ1I53ZH2VXyLNWGBw9X02k3VaHgFhcOEPgmh7hfDOmbwAjpNdePMCvUFHpIoJWap5GBCnO5LeOqsVK65XXEctE01jHZIwXrMOMuV5f28XrgDeefdabeiFs9kHo--7Q6Osf3DhQSEAAq3DbqxA%2Be8KnPJAEBjXkiwHBKzRMtK5%2BlaAho%2FHWq%2FPkZiegtsPUrrZODyAKrfXnQ2raHsY0oMuz14lbTTvJpBgQxFm8%3D|tkp%3ABk9SR8yL1qfxZA

Thanks!  Found two Kraken Hydra v6000 for a good price.