Black-water video shooting techniques?

[bghazzal]

I just have a bit of time on my hands, and a tendency to go untethered online 😁

There definitely seems to be a steep learning curve, especially for video - after watching these, what i'm planning fits in the "bonfire-dive" category, which requires much less logistical planning (and no boat...)

Only variation is that I plan on placing the light on a mooring light in mid-water rather than on the sand, which brings it closer to blackwater, but with only 10 meters of water under my fins....

 

Main issue I see at the moment is getting a powerful lure light with decent autonomy - apparently it's better to set it up, then wait for 30 minutes for the food-chain to build up around the light...

Edited January 11 by bghazzal

[Davide DB]

I have watched all the videos and also the tutorials. You can also interrogate me. 👮🏼‍♂️

 

What I got out of it:

• Blackwater video seems to be more difficult than photography.
• It is important to be a diver with good skills.
• Keeping the critters in focus is really a challenge: MF with focus peaking or latest PDAF tech.
• Exposure challenge: Zebra stripes help me!

If I think back to my difficulty in shooting small animals in the current in the daytime blue, I think I would not be able to do better than the videos I have seen. But I can still say in no uncertain terms that, Aquatilis aside and maybe one other, they are all terrible. They are all burned out or out of focus and ruined by backscatter. For many of them it is not possible to trace the cameras used.

 

The video tutorial seems to contradict the article linked above. It says to use lights between 4K and 10K lumens. Basically really bright lights while didn't understand what it says about focus light placement. 
Then looking at the tutorial example video brings to mind the saying "do as I say but don't do as I do" 🙂

 

It made a lot more sense to me to not use too strong lights because you lose the reflected luminescence of many organisms and then the distances are short. It seems to me that the recommendations of macro shots and not wide angle shots apply more.
With fairly concentrated lights only around the subject you avoid illuminating the entire portion of water between the lens and the subject limiting backscatter. A low power medium wide focus light would help to not lose the critter into the dark.

I read that many divers use a handheld torch to scout critters.

 

Of course I am thinking out loud: until you try it in the water it is hard to know the truth. I am waiting for the tests of @bghazzal   😜

[Davide DB]

Well, could we call it Blackwater?

I wouldn't watch it before a night dive 👻

 

 

[bghazzal]

  

16 hours ago, Davide DB said:

I have watched all the videos and also the tutorials. You can also interrogate me. 👮🏼‍♂️

 

What I got out of it:

• Blackwater video seems to be more difficult than photography.
• It is important to be a diver with good skills.
• Keeping the critters in focus is really a challenge: MF with focus peaking or latest PDAF tech.
• Exposure challenge: Zebra stripes help me!

If I think back to my difficulty in shooting small animals in the current in the daytime blue, I think I would not be able to do better than the videos I have seen. But I can still say in no uncertain terms that, Aquatilis aside and maybe one other, they are all terrible. They are all burned out or out of focus and ruined by backscatter. For many of them it is not possible to trace the cameras used.

 

The video tutorial seems to contradict the article linked above. It says to use lights between 4K and 10K lumens. Basically really bright lights while didn't understand what it says about focus light placement. 
Then looking at the tutorial example video brings to mind the saying "do as I say but don't do as I do" 🙂

 

It made a lot more sense to me to not use too strong lights because you lose the reflected luminescence of many organisms and then the distances are short. It seems to me that the recommendations of macro shots and not wide angle shots apply more.
With fairly concentrated lights only around the subject you avoid illuminating the entire portion of water between the lens and the subject limiting backscatter. A low power medium wide focus light would help to not lose the critter into the dark.

I read that many divers use a handheld torch to scout critters.

 

Of course I am thinking out loud: until you try it in the water it is hard to know the truth. I am waiting for the tests of @bghazzal   😜

Hehehe, yes, that's a pretty good summary of what seems to be rather contradictory statements...😆

I also think camera light power won't be too much of an issue - bumping the iso and also shutter speed a little (the 180° rule of shutter doesn't really affect closeup UW footage, frankly there's no Saving-Private-Ryan-battlescene-effect when shooting critters...), and aiming for a form of lightbox (two weaker lights to the side, almost earmuff style and one light central and angled above and down) should work i think.
It's the setup I use primarily for macro now and it's fairly flexible. Using only a +6 diopter (or none?) should give enough range inside the light box.

Main issue should be getting /. keepign the critter in the focus / light area and finding the right angles to light it, keep the fluorescence without overexposing, and also.... keeping steady enough, which is going to be hard work and might require using the Aquatilis Laundry Basket© technology or similar...
Not having access to 4K 60fps, still haven't made up my mind whether going for 1080p 60fps for slow-mo or 4K 30fps which is what I normally use - I have both dialed in as presets, so I guess I'll see in situation, if I'm struggling to keep critters in focus/lit, I might go for slow-mo mode instead.

The other main issue will probably be backscatter and also swarming, based on night dive experience - I think this is where the idea of having powerful lure lights come in handy, to keep the swarm focused on the lure lighting rather than on the camera video lights.

The Backscatter MW4300 has a red light function which might come in handy for this, we'll see.

But there are lot of particules in the water at the moment, so it will be difficult to avoid backscatter unless it clears up a little, and the surge is going to make things difficult.

It's really dark now in the current moon-phase but I think I'll wait a few weeks for the next new moon, hopefully the surge will subside and I can also work on the lure light, see if I can borrow something (very tempting to buy another MW4300 for this purpose, with the added justification of having a wider light box for normal macro, but vade retro spending-demon....)
But maybe i'm overthinking this, and a couple of narrow-beam dive lights might work to attract critters, I don't know - based on previous experience wide-angled video lights are really a bug magnet UW.

 

But yep, it's all speculation until you've actually gone in and tried it... Which I'm excited to, enough to overcoming my usual night-diving laziness ....

I'll update my findings - if enough critters showup (which I guess it's also linked to cycles and planktonic movement, something Simon Buxton touches on in the Boot talk), I'll probably keep at it a little to experiment, see what seems to work best.
 

Edited January 13 by bghazzal

[bghazzal]

8 hours ago, Davide DB said:

Well, could we call it Blackwater?

I wouldn't watch it before a night dive 👻

 

 

Now that's a fish!!!! 🤩
The section starting 40 minutes in certainly is - seems to work well enough with only the massive lights they have on the main camera + hand held light btw....
 

 

[Davide DB]

6 hours ago, bghazzal said:

It's the setup I use primarily for macro now and it's fairly flexible. Using only a +6 diopter (or none?) should give enough range inside the light box.

 

Being the first time, I would go with the default lens and port. I don't know which critters you can spot there but on your LX-10 you have a 24-72mm zoom. Quite enough IMHO.

I would use 1080@50p even if it's only 28 Mbps. Topaz or Resolve superscale makes miracles but you can switch your camera to 4K@30p in a blink. 30p can be slowed down to 80% easily.

 

If the critter isn't moving fast you can break the 180° rule filming at the same FPS number. Nobody will scream 🙂

 

[Barmaglot]

On 1/6/2024 at 9:53 PM, TimG said:

Wow, that is a really interesting point. How is that done for black water diving? No lights, and presumably a boat drifting and not on a mooring?

I've done blackwater diving with The Smiling Seahorse liveaboard in Andaman Sea; they do at least one blackwater dive per trip, and occasionally they do a blackwater-focused trip (I'm going on one in nine days! Hurray!). The way they do it is that they have a large buoy with a line attached to it, and a light shining into the buoy - this makes the whole buoy glow, so it is visible from a ways away on the surface. On the line, there are pairs of Archon 5400 lumen video lights, one pair at three meters pointing up, another pair at five meters pointing down, another pair at ten meters, another pair at fifteen meters, and finally some lead weights to stabilize the whole thing. All the lights are turned on as the divers are getting suited up, and the line is chucked into the water - preferably, this is done in as deep a place as feasible. The boat follows the buoy, the divers jump in, swim over to the buoy and descend near the line. Nobody is tethered - the line is visible from a fairly long way away, and even if you get too far away to see the video lights, you can find your way back to it by homing on the photographers' flashes. During the dive, the boat follows the buoy as it drifts with the current and picks up the divers as they come up.

 

Edited January 13 by Barmaglot

[Davide DB]

46 minutes ago, Barmaglot said:

done blackwater diving with The Smiling Seahorse liveaboard in Andaman Sea; they do at least one blackwater dive per trip, and occasionally they do a blackwater-focused trip (I'm going on one in nine days! Hurray!)

 

We look forward to read a report from you (full of BTS photos) 🙂

 

[bghazzal]

Great thanks-  this sounds like a very similar setup to what my wife tells me she did while working a trip from Thailand to Myanmar (not Smiling Seahorse, but Andaman Queen) a few years back

Floating buoy, line shining into the buoy for the captain to follow, weighted line down to 25m and lights roughly every 5 meters - she doesn't remember the position of the lights though.

 

She says it was full of squid ink when she entered  - divers were already down there and squid probably got spooked
But no pictures so didn't happen 😁

 

Edited January 14 by bghazzal

[Tobyone]

On 1/5/2024 at 6:15 AM, Davide DB said:

Interesting thread Ben!

 

While it is easy to see lots of blackwater photos, it is difficult to see good videos and almost impossible to get information on the techniques used.

The most beautiful blackwater video is this one shot on the island of Ponza a few years ago by Alexander Semenov for his Aquatilis project. IIRC his footage was also used by the BBC. If you look on his channel there are several videos taken at the same location.
He used a Panasonic S1 and a GH5 with lenses that are anything but macro (the animals filmed are large). 
I've always been intrigued by the 'strange' technique used to stabilize the camera: a plastic basket that increases the volume of the kit and makes everything more stable. This reminds us that no matter how powerful, our cameras do not have the ideal ergonomics for shooting video.

 

Technique aside, I would like to add one more consideration: it is usually thought that blackwater requires abysmal depths in which major migrations of plankton and larval-stage animals down the water column take place...
This video proves otherwise. I am familiar with the island of Ponza and you can clearly see that they are on a small shoal almost outcropping not far from the harbour. It is true, however, that the island is very far from the coast. Evidently, in this case, more seasonal factors (spring) and currents count.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Fantastic!!!

[Whiskeyjack]

On 1/10/2024 at 8:11 PM, bghazzal said:

Here is are some blackwater diving video shooting tips from DPG:
 

 

 

 

 

from the original article available here:

https://www.divephotoguide.com/underwater-photography-special-features/article/quick-tips-black-water-video-macro

 

 

Otherwise here is a Q&A with Simon Buxton with some video-focused tips in there:
 

Finally here is a little playlist I compiled of some actual blackwater / "Bonfire" videos available on Youtube:

 

 

Great article! Cool to see stuff from the Anilao guys, I div frequently with Jonathan Venn, and know Ram and Gutsy as well, they are definitely experts in blackwater/bonfire diving.

[bvanant]

My wife has a bunch of blackwater video up on vimeo (https://vimeo.com/nannettev), shot with a Sony 4K handicam in a Recsea housing and two Sola 2500 lights. Mostly these were not tethered, we only do tethers in Hawaii (maybe a US or Hawaii liability thing). I think there are two types of blackwater critters. If you believe in the diet migration business, things living in the dark come at night to feed. They go back down when it gets light (they come up during total eclipse). They don't like light and putting ginormous lights on the downline will keep them away. The second set of critters are truly pelagic and are around day and night. Lights will attract krill type shrimps and bugs and these attract squid and other predators so it is a mixed bag of what you get. We just did a bunch of BW dives in Komodo with some good critters (juvenile blue ring, pelagic sea horse) and tons of squid. For me the lights are to show the divers where the line is and the light on the ball is to show the tender driver where the divers should be. 

 

Bill

 

[bghazzal]

Thanks Bill, this is really interesting, and really like the alternate tale on the role of lure lights.
 

 

Nannette's blackwater vids are fantastic - if you don't mind, I'll post some links here for reference:

 

 

 

 

 

It would be great if you could also share some technical info on how she approached these blackwater video shoots on the Sony handicam (basic settings used, light positioning for instance), and generally what seemed to work best in terms of getting good shots on video, where to wait etc....

Thanks again!

Ben

 

Edited January 23 by bghazzal

[christophe chellapermal]

 

 

On 1/13/2024 at 2:46 PM, Barmaglot said:

I've done blackwater diving with The Smiling Seahorse liveaboard in Andaman Sea; they do at least one blackwater dive per trip, and occasionally they do a blackwater-focused trip (I'm going on one in nine days! Hurray!). The way they do it is that they have a large buoy with a line attached to it, and a light shining into the buoy - this makes the whole buoy glow, so it is visible from a ways away on the surface. On the line, there are pairs of Archon 5400 lumen video lights, one pair at three meters pointing up, another pair at five meters pointing down, another pair at ten meters, another pair at fifteen meters, and finally some lead weights to stabilize the whole thing. All the lights are turned on as the divers are getting suited up, and the line is chucked into the water - preferably, this is done in as deep a place as feasible. The boat follows the buoy, the divers jump in, swim over to the buoy and descend near the line. Nobody is tethered - the line is visible from a fairly long way away, and even if you get too far away to see the video lights, you can find your way back to it by homing on the photographers' flashes. During the dive, the boat follows the buoy as it drifts with the current and picks up the divers as they come up.

 

Im heading also heading on smiling seahorse end of feb looking forward to it Franck and camille are good old time friends actually. I have just tried for the second time to organize black water in the uae. it was last sat right on new moon we were difrting with the boat. i had a brigh light set up 80k lumen with a gen set at 6 m 2 keldan8k flux at 10 and 2500 lumen at 15 m. I think we were not far out defo will be trying it out again 

[christophe chellapermal]

I must say that first video you posted @Davide DB from artilis i really wonder what lens he has behind that set up... i wonder if i use my z24-50 on wwl1 @50mm if that would do the trick.... 

[Davide DB]

On 2/14/2024 at 9:07 PM, christophe chellapermal said:

I must say that first video you posted @Davide DB from artilis i really wonder what lens he has behind that set up... i wonder if i use my z24-50 on wwl1 @50mm if that would do the trick.... 

 

From Youtube author's comments:

 

Quote

Different native lenses from Panasonic. Our most used lenses now are 8-18mm and 15mm, but 12-35mm, 8mm fisheye and 30mm macro works quite good as well. Bucket is for stabilisation, yes) Weighting almost nothing, underwater It adds a lot of inertia, so you avoid tiny shakes and movements, but also need to be very careful when moving camera fast since it makes vortex that immediately washes away all those tiny stuff.

 

@Barmaglot did you do blackwater in Andaman sea?

 

[bghazzal]

10 hours ago, Davide DB said:

 

@Barmaglot did you do blackwater in Andaman sea?

A few Andaman Sea liiveaboard boats that used to go to from Thailand up to Myanmar/Burma (leaving from Phuket or Khao-Lak/Tap Lamu or Ranong used to organize blackwater dives - my wife did one on a trip to Myanmar on a trip she worked the Andaman Queen, and otherwise the Smiling Seahorse used to do regularly them as well.
I doubt the trips are running with the ongoing situation in Myanmar, so not sure what the blackwater status is.

Maybe it's possible to do blackwater on the Thai side, in the Similans/Surin islands, but it's fairly shallow, and night diving itself really wasn't a highlight when I was working there...

[Barmaglot]

On 3/7/2024 at 10:04 PM, Davide DB said:

@Barmaglot did you do blackwater in Andaman sea?

Yes. The Smiling Seahorse liveaboard does at least one per trip, sometimes several when there is enough interest and conditions allow. They also run one blackwater-focused trip per season, where they do a blackwater dive each evening, sometimes two. As a matter of fact, I'm coming back from a Myanmar (Mergui Archipelago) trip right now; we did two blackwater dives - one near Black Rock, another... somewhere, but sure exactly where.

 

On the Thailand side, they usually do it in the Koh Bon/Koh Tachai area, there's about 70-80 meters of depth there.

[christophe chellapermal]

@Barmaglot and @bghazzal@Davide DB actually just came back from smiling seahorse, franck the owner of  the boat is one of the most passionate photographers i have had the chance to know  funnily enough i knew him before he was diving professionally and did his aow-dm at my place back when i had a center ! Long story short they offer black water trips on every trip if there is enough participant, myanmar just reopened this was the first cruise and we got to do 2 bw dives. It was interesting i have yet to look at my photos, i was on the z8 and must say i was really struggling with the af in black water. I used to shoot a d500 and it was much more efficient for bw. For wa it was great for daytime macro too but for black water without 2 x 5k lumen focus light i would not get a focus and i tried many af-servo the most efficient was af-c with a large box.. i did try using my 16-35 in a 230 mm port to film for macros as well as th 24-50 with wwl1 to film but very hard to get sharpness in both cases.  David i can only guess those lenses you quote were on m4/3 so maybe on fx a 50-85mm would be better provided it has short focus distance..  

[Barmaglot]

18 minutes ago, christophe chellapermal said:

@Barmaglot and @bghazzal@Davide DB actually just came back from smiling seahorse

Wait wait wait, besides you and me, how many board members were on that trip? LOL, I really should talk to people more...

 

19 minutes ago, christophe chellapermal said:

i was on the z8 and must say i was really struggling with the af in black water. I used to shoot a d500 and it was much more efficient for bw. For wa it was great for daytime macro too but for black water without 2 x 5k lumen focus light i would not get a focus and i tried many af-servo the most efficient was af-c with a large box.

This is actually quite similar to my experience on Sony a6300. Before I used to use a Weefine Smart Focus 1000 for focus lighting, and found that it really struggled to lock focus unless I added the light from both Retra Pro modeling lights and often the spotting torch as well (I'd hold it with my ring and pinky fingers of the left hand, pointing it at the subject, as the rest of the hand was holding up the camera handle). This trip I put my old Archon D36V on the cold shoe, and found that focusing got a lot easier. Still not perfect, but not as much of a struggle as it used to be. It's kinda worrying though, that a brand-new flagship body is exhibiting similar issues to an eight-year-old camera that retailed at a quarter of its cost.

[Davide DB]

1 hour ago, Barmaglot said:

Wait wait wait, besides you and me, how many board members were on that trip? LOL, I really should talk to people more...

 

Do you mean you were on the same boat and you discovered it right now? 😄

 

[Davide DB]

Could it depends on the lens and the critters size?

 

 

[christophe chellapermal]

20 hours ago, Barmaglot said:

Wait wait wait, besides you and me, how many board members were on that trip? LOL, I really should talk to people more...

 

This is actually quite similar to my experience on Sony a6300. Before I used to use a Weefine Smart Focus 1000 for focus lighting, and found that it really struggled to lock focus unless I added the light from both Retra Pro modeling lights and often the spotting torch as well (I'd hold it with my ring and pinky fingers of the left hand, pointing it at the subject, as the rest of the hand was holding up the camera handle). This trip I put my old Archon D36V on the cold shoe, and found that focusing got a lot easier. Still not perfect, but not as much of a struggle as it used to be. It's kinda worrying though, that a brand-new flagship body is exhibiting similar issues to an eight-year-old camera that retailed at a quarter of its cost.

 This is too funy man i just realised lol thats so funy that we were together on the same trip and didn t realise !!

I think you are right about focus light i'm looking as we speak to order quite a few lights im probably going to go with big blue for the line im still not sure if i should go with 5000 lumen or 9 000 lumen i will add some focus lights smalled than 20 lumen galia even if i use it at half power...

 

I have done some research yesterday mike bartick is also on a z8 he is using the f105 the z105 and seems to be also using the 24-50  but with the wacp-1 instead of the wwl1 not sure if the focusing distance is better with the wacp... 

 

 

[bghazzal]

 

As an update, I finally got to try out a little “black-water” video.
Not sure the name is really appropriate, as what I’m going for is not a open-ocean deep-water lights on a line config, but rather a type of “bonfire” dive, i.e. a relatively night dive where you focus on small larval/ planktonic critters in the water column, attracted by the lights.

 

As such, the dive is actually done in the shallows, but hovering in the water-column instead of staying on the sand, and while the water certainly is black, it's is more of a water-column macro night dive than a glide over the cold abyss...

It might not sound as adventurous or exciting but logistics are way easier, budget-friendly, and I currently have the chance of diving on outskirts the Lombok Strait , which is extremely an extremely rich, deep through-flow environment.
Also there's quite a learning curve for shooting black-water video, and I'm happy to work on figuring things out this way before committing to much more expensive true black-water logistics...

 

The general idea is the same, lure lights to attract critters, and waiting for the food chain to reconstruct itself around these lure lights.

 

 

First impressions is that it’s definitely possible, and a welcome change from the usual critters, but there's a lot of experimenting to be done to get some nice video footage.

 

As I didn’t set out to do a full black-water type dive (and my wife was busy calling spotting in the sand and calling me for funky cephalopods, frogfish etc), so didn't spend the full dive on it (and kept changing light positions and settings). The plan next time is to focus on water-column critters only, to try and figure things out.

I didn’t try tying lights to a deeper mooring, as I'd said I would in the thread above, and instead just hung around at 15m on the slope facing the channel.
We'd missed the new-moon, but night was still quite dark yesterday (waxing gibbous moon), and a lot of stuff in the water.

I tried two things, just waiting for the swarm to form itself around my camera’s lights, and the other, placing a small (tiny) lure light in the sand for a few minutes.

 

Please note that I have nowhere near as much power as what is typically used for these types of dives – I’d emailed NAD Lembeh’s Simon Buxton to ask for more info on the logistics of their bonfire dives and didn’t get anwer, but from what I gather they have a setup in the hundred-thousands + of lumen, assembling a large bunch of old video lights.

 

I was on a much more modest 4300 lumen video light on camera, two 800 lumens\ and 1000 lumen dive light, but even with this ridiculously small amount of light, it’s amazing how much critters this can attract in this area.

 

Still, I came back excited by the potential, and also with more questions than answers, so they’ll have to be a lot of trial-and-error before I can get proper video footage...

 

Since this is a work-in-progress and I believe in sharing info, I’ll share some of these raw first observations and interrogations here.
As a reminder, this thread is on black-water video rather than stills, as there are very specific issues when trying to capture moving-pictures of small critters in open water, rather than freezing their movement.

 

 

Video lighting

 

- First basic observation is that well, continuous lighting of small fast-moving critters in a black water column isn’t easy, as it’s difficult to get a good reference point to best position the light(s)...

 

- Because of this, practical and efficient video light positioning isn’t super clear – I used the MW4300 as a main central light and two weaker lights on both sides, as I usually do for macro.
This lightbox type config (weaker lights on the side, in earmuff position) seems to work well for following focus (peaking), but for the main light, it wasn’t clear if frontal was more efficient/practical than top-down...

 

-  For the main light source, it's not clear if a wider beam is preferable to a narrower beam (the MW4300 has wide and macro spot) – a narrower beam would make it easier to isolate a critter from the swarm, but speed of movement makes it more difficult to track. A wider-beam is more flexible, but the swarm is much more present, and this is not practical if the lure light is the cameras.

 

- How much light power is really required to shoot these small, mostly transparent critters?

 

- The swarm groups around and follows the strongest light source. This is connected to the “how much light” question above, but if the shooting video light is stronger than the lure light, the swarm will reform around the camera's shooting light.

 

This is something to be wary of, for people with minimal lure lights...
If the swarm forms around the camera's main light, shooting critters in the swarm around the camera is not practical (too close, and too dense to isolate a critter, since the swarm follows the main light)

But maybe it’s possible to shoot with less light on camera, I could perhaps work with a narrow-beam snoot light and use my primary 4300 lm video light as a lure, detaching it from the camera…

 

Or maybe th MW4300 light’s narrow beam be used to follow critters without attracting as many critters as the light’s wide mode?

 

 

Lens / focal  / diopter

 

-   it's not super clear what lens works best – I was shooting with an Inon UCL165 +6 diopter, but wonder if a +12 / +15 might not be better.
Big issue, when a critter is not fully isolated against a black background, is background movement speed.
Zoomed in and following a small critter, the speed of background-movement (which in my camera-light-as-lure-light situation are all the other critters) is quite disturbing.
But it's difficult to get enough magnification without zooming in…
So maybe a half-zoomed stronger diopter? Hmm...

 

Lure-light setup

 

-   Suspended light (facing down) or in the sand facing up?
Not commiting fully to water-column shooting, I didn’t try the suspended version (hanging lights on a deep mooring line, roughly at 15m depth), but placing the light in the sand in the "bonfire" config results in an upwards-shooting beam of light, which could be more problematic than a downwards facing one - this is something to check, as it might depend on lure-light power (maybe it's possible to stay on the side of the "bonfire" of lure lights and follow interesting subjects around)

 

Framerate

 

This is a purely LX10 / compact issue, but I don’t have 4K 60fps – while I don’t usually slow down footage, the speed of these critters makes it necessary, to really get to see the movement, and extend the encounter…

For me, getting 60fps means dropping down video quality to 1080p, unfortunately…

But given the speed of the critters, maybe 120fps “high speed video” might even be worth it…

 

Other observations

 

- I was afraid that I would be attracting lots of lionfish, but in the open water column this seems ok, none showed up, whereas they often get close to hunt near the light when shooting close to the sand

 

Anyway, more questions than answers for now, and lots to dig into...

 

 

cheers

ben

 

 

 

 

Edited July 14 by bghazzal

[bghazzal]

To illustrate this post, as it might be a little abstract,  here is some rough footage of yesterday's chaotic "bonfire" swarm, showing what critters show up in only a couple of minutes...
Nothing fancy but promising, and some interesting looking dudes, especially for ony a few minutes of testing in the water column...
Certainly challenging, but also welcome change from what I've been shooting lately!

 

- The first shot is swarm building up around 2 dive lights (roughly only 1000 lm in total) in the sand, after maybe 2 or 3 minutes or so only.

Rest is the chaos around the camera when using my main camera mounted light as the lure (which made life difficult, as the swarm was on me, rather than me coming up to the swarm...

 

Nothing is great, and it was difficult to isolate subjects in the swarm and get/keep them in focus, and their speed means that 60fps slow-motion would be in order rather than the 30fps I'm shooting in here (1080p it will have to be...), but I kind of also like the chaotic energy these tiny critters have.
It could be fun slowed-down quite a bit...

 

 

 

Regarding light position, looking at last night's footage, more frontal lighting lights up more backscatter, which in the darkness gives a dark-green particle hue.
It's ok, but I can tell which shots are top-down and which ones are more frontal, and top down is cleaner.

 

To work on light position and focal, I'm thinking of doing some dry tests by creating a small mobile with bits of transparent plastic hanging from a fishing line.
Plan would be shoot this contraption in the darkness with a fan on to generate movement, see what works best, so there's a little less to figure out in-situ.

 

cheers!

 

ben

 

 

Edited July 14 by bghazzal