Hi All, this is a general question to compare notes on how do you conduct night dives, as I am curious at how others do it.

• What dive/focus/modeling lights do you use?

• How have you set them up on the camera?

• How do you use them for navigation, search and modeling?

On my own journey these are my notes:

In my first setup, I used a single focus light (Light and Motion Gobe 1000 Wide) mounted on the hotshoe as my navigation, search, and modeling light. This worked well for navigation and search since the beam aligned with my camera’s view — I simply pointed the camera toward where I wanted to move or search. However, in murky water the in-line light illuminated suspended particles, causing the camera to struggle with focus. Additionally, because the light was hotshoe-mounted, it blocked my line of sight whenever I looked over the camera to visually recheck the subject.

For my second setup, I moved the focus light off the camera and mounted two lights on the strobes (aligned with their direction) — Light and Motion Sola 1200 Photo. This gave good cross coverage and avoided illuminating particles directly in front of the lens. The drawback was navigation and subject search—because the lights weren’t aligned with my vision, it was difficult to peer into crevices or see far ahead when navigating.

My third setup I decided to just have a single focus light (Light and Motion Sola 1200 Photo) on a triple clamp at the base of my strobe arm. This kept it clear of my line of sight when looking over the camera and angled enough to avoid lighting up particulate matter. For navigation and subject search, I decided to use a separate hand mounted dive light (generic dive light). This allows me to move freely without constantly maneuvering the camera — keeping it light and nimble until I find a subject, at which point I bring the camera into position.

I am now thinking of optimizing the focus light to just light up the immediate working area and minimize disturbing subjects (red or low lumens) — the Sola 1200 is too bright on both the red and white light. I am thinking of getting one of the inon focus light as I heard they can go very dim. Any suggestions here would be happy to hear.

While the dive light can be bright and provide good long range illumination — again any good suggestion on dive light would be appreciated. I am looking to the OrcaTorch D570-GL Light with Laser Pointer at the moment, thinking a laser would be helpful in pointing out subjects.

Where I do most of my dives (the Pacific Northwest), 10-15 ft is considered good viz and once I drop below 50 ft, day and night are pretty much the same. I use a Kraken Hydra 1200 focus light on the hot shoe, but it's mounted with a long clamp to give a little more offset to minimize backscatter on the subject and keep the camera trying to lock focus on particles. With the long clamp, I can angle it to the left to allow me to see past it easily enough, and it's set to wide to give me some idea of what the strobes will pick up around the subject. I use a tight beam dive light in a soft hand mount on my non-dominant hand for spotting. It's an older light from Dive Gear Express, but anything in reasonable size range would work.

Overall, this is a fairly minimalistic setup; I've considered more lighting but it just means more drag, more batteries to deal with, and more moreness to scare away critters and irritate my dive buddies. My strobes have modeling lights built in, which gets me the redundancy I need for safety.

My setup for night dives is the same as for dives during the day. I always have a torch with a neoprene Goodman handle on my right hand, as well as two small torches that can be switched between spot, flood, red, and UV modes. The latter are mounted next to the base mount of my strobes (a dual ball mount on each side of the housing: one for the strobe arm, the second for the light). They are used as focus lights and for video.

This setup gives me maximum flexibility: I can direct the main light in any direction using the Goodman handle, while at the same time I always have focus lights pointing in the same direction as the camera. The focus lights are only turned on when needed, whereas the light on the Goodman handle is almost always on.

Why red light? Some creatures, especially fish, cannot see red light. This allows you to approach them more closely without scaring them away.

Edited 14 hours ago14 hr by Jens H

The kit for night divr depends on what and how I am going to shoot.

For timid creatures that don't like light, i use a small flashlight with a narrow beam is used, sometimes with a colored filter.
When photographing squid, I like to use a separate flashlight that I hold in my hand. This makes it easier to lure the squid to the desired location.

If the location is new and I don't know what I can see there, I use a powerful modeling light with 10,000-15,000 lumens. Plus a modeling light from the flashes.

Art photography is a separate category. Here, lighting setups can be quite complex, such as individual mini-tripods with lights or flashes.

Edited 10 hours ago10 hr by Andrey Narchuk

I like a camera-mounted light with a variable power setting. If I'm in the tropics with a lot of krill in the water, I'll often cover the light, switch to red, or turn it off and let my eyes adjust to everyone else's lights. I like an additional spotter light in addition to the camera's focus light. For California day diving, I often use my focus light on 7% brightness just to see colors and spot things more easily. I like my Fix 2000DX because it has such a big range from candlelight to LUMENS! so of course they don't make it anymore. (Maybe L&M has something to replace it?)

For black water I have the same arrangement but the focus light is usually much brighter to assist focusing, also because krill is not as common away from the reef. But still with the spotter light looking for critters in the distance.