Recommendations? Post: Hi everyone, I’m looking for recommendations for high-quality underwater video lights, mainly for blue water filming and encounters with large pelagic wildlife such as sharks, whales and other big fish. I’m particularly interested in lights that offer high light output, a wide beam angle, excellent color rendering, good performance in blue water and reliable battery life. I’d love to hear about your personal experiences and which video lights you would recommend for this kind of underwater filming. Thanks in advance for your advice and recommendations.

If you have the funds, Keldan, especially anything around 12K lumens or above.

Video lights won't do much for sharks, whales and larger fish, as they have a very limited effective range / throw, around 1 to 1.5 metres at best. However, they can help bring out some close up highlights if the animals are close enough. Keep in mind that video light use is also frowned upon / forbidden in certain situations as it can scare off the animals (schooling hammerheads for instance)

However, if you do use them, you'll be white balancing to ambient light for this kind of shooting, so it's worth considering ambient filters for your lights.
These typically cut light output by around half (hence the need for higher lumen lights) Keldan also offers pre-filtered lights, which are a great option if this is all you shoot (they're more problematic for full artificial lighting situations, think macro, night dives, wrecks, deep dives), as you retain the full light output.

You basically can't go wrong with Keldan for all the aspects you mentioned, but they come with a hefty price tag.

For more accessible options, look into the Kraken and Weefine ranges. At the budget end, there's also Seafrogs, although it's difficult to comment on their build or light quality. I use Kraken Hydras myself.

Another aspect you should definitely pay attention to is constant output: lights that maintain their brightness as battery charge decreases, rather than gradually dimming.

As for CRI, it's unfortunately a somewhat misleading metric for evaluating underwater video lights, and a bit of a scam, as manufacturers can achieve high scores with LEDs that are far from great by optimising for the particular parameters (limited colours) being measured.
Keldan, Kraken and Weefine lights have a nice colour rendering, others, YMMV

Finally, when it comes to beam angle, keep in mind that a tighter beam concentrates more light on your subject. Since you'll be using two lights, I wouldn't prioritise wide beams. In fact, I'd look at the opposite. Beam quality is important though.

Some threads you can check out:

https://waterpixels.net/forums/topic/4024-keldan-lights/
https://waterpixels.net/forums/topic/1524-constant-output-video-lights/
https://waterpixels.net/forums/topic/1413-red-filters-and-blue-ambient-light-filters-for-mixed-light-shooting

cheers!

Edited 36 minutes ago36 min by bghazzal