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The Lumen ratings on cheap lights in aliexpress and similar sites are likely works of fiction. I have heard many say they all seem to come from the same factory, so not much to choose between them until you get into named brands and more $$$. The reason for warm light is that when colour balancing on the subject, the background water becomes a deeper blue, this is mainly used in strobes for still images. Strobes are way more powerful than lights and I would expect that you would struggle to get the same effect on video as the amount of artificial light is generally less than what you get with a strobe as you need to push the colour temperature further overall to get the same colour balance on the subject with less artificial light added.

Tried that but it did not trigger the strobe. Thank you very much everyone for helping. Probably the flash bulb is out!

Welcome!

I have not found anything in the warm color temp, and CRI numbers seem to be nonexistent. Edit: Keldan quotes CRI, but they are very expensive. The Backscatter HF-1 is not cheap, nor does it have warm color temp, but it has a lot of light available so you could add diffusers/filters to warm the light at the expense of lower output. Bluewater has a 3000 lumen video light with a nice looking diffuse beam at 6500k for $250. I don’t see a CRI listed. If you put a diffuser on it the color temp should drop below 6K. Not experience yet—I have one ordered. I’m just getting into lighting underwater, but have been told color temperature is less important as long as you set the white balance. Maybe others more knowledgeable will comment.

I have been on the hunt for a pair of reasonably priced(!) warm white lights for my gopro. Have I missed something or ~4000K, 95 CRI is STILL rainbow unicorn category? Apparently little $ can buy loads of lumens on Aliexpress, but those are typically 6000K and digging deeper, poor CRI/spectrum. There are lights with combined LED's, where you get a few warm 3500K LED-s in it, BUT after little research I found some horrible CRI figures for those warm LED's too! E.g. this beast claims to have "4 pieces of XHP50 LED yellow light (3500K)". Now checking the documentation, I find a poor 70(!) color rendering index and a spectrum with a Mariana trench @ 480nm (most likely the reason for those terrible CRI's). As water likes to absorb red very quickly, I am leaning towards WARM lights but definitely with a more even spectrum. Absolute worse case, I still have a pair of Tungsten lights but they are ofc super power hungry (100W each) and require a heavy battery, something I am not keen travelling with. TLDR: any recommendations for reliable, serviceable (e.g uses standard Li batteries) video lights that preferably don't break the bank?

Hello Julio, welcome to the forum, good to have you here. I pasted your text into Notepad, a plain text editor which strips formatting and copied and pasted back to forum - this allows the text to warp. If you paste in text from external sources this can help to ensure it displays prperly on the forum.

Hola Julio, Welcome aboard! Ciao

Hello everyone, my name is Julio Martínez. I currently use an Olympus OMD em1 mkii in an Isotta underwater housing. Glad to be here. Greetings from Spain. Hello everyone, my name is Julio Martínez. I currently use an Olympus OMD em1 mkii in an Isotta underwater housing. Glad to be here. Greetings from Spain.

The problem was the subject behind the camera 😄. It was first time i did macro or close-up on gopro with this lens ucl-03 Its hard to tell if what we filming is in focus. No issues with aoi uwl-03

Yeah I was talking with the seller about it and I get the impression they don't really know what they have, just what it cost new.

I think I pointed this out on a couple of occasions already: current ai-based image processing algorithms (de-noise and sharpening) can improve the IQ substantially „offline“. I own both the 14-42 RII and the ez pancake (Oly) - both deliver results that are certainly ok and can be further improved via ai. I don‘t think that this is a limiting factor in any non-professional setting; but not everyone likes all the post-processing work. Perhaps more important is that the pancake zoom has a reputation of breaking easy, I.e. the ribbon cable wears off by all this automatic extending in and out. The RII is also collapsing, but manually And I just keep it extended pretty much all the time. The AOI PC housing for the OM10 has a port for the pancake zoom, which ist slightly shorter than the manual RII. It may be wise to search the classifieds for a good second hand copy of the pancake zoom in time, or one of the older Olympus pen housings that have a port for the RII. These should fit on the AOI housing, but won‘t match its „style“. I have different wet lenses for wide-angle and cannot comment on the AOI or WWL-1. If a fisheye is what your buddy wants, then the manual Saamyang/Rokinon/Walimex/ etc. 7.5 mm Fisheye is another option. All manual (compromise) but excellent IQ and dirt cheap second hand. Works was a drop-in replacement for the Panny 8mm.

Why did the GoPro have focus issues? I’m diving Monday with a GoPro and Wide Sharp wet lens for the first time.

The little ones (crested blenny) are very shy to get them close enough 😀 Zoom too much in davinci will eat out the details

First time testing AOI UCL-O3 macro lens + Gopro labs firmware 99% of clips was out-of-focus, but the small bits i managed to get in focus looks promising. GT-TUNE plugin makes all the diference. Super-macro is out of the question with Action camera.

Aloha and welcome @françois !

Thank you for letting me know. I saw that and have it in my watchlist, but due to no returns allowed, a limited description of condition and limited photos, I am a bit hesitant unless price comes down more.

😁

Yes French but from Alsace also far from the sea.

Hi, can agree with rays on Male tiger spot. We saw not hundreds but quiet a lot of rays . Vis for Photos a nightmare. Lots of sand and stuff in the water as spot is very close to the harbour. Too many boats in/out. Fuva is also at harbour entry but only few small boats pathing due to small village port. Vis was much better. Attachted photos with 8-15mm + Teleconverter 1,4. I think you can imagine how close the guys come close. Br Markus

I’ll give it a shot going in with low expectations. Doing a liveaboard from Male so might as well. Looks like viz is usually pretty low and hundreds of rays that silt like crazy.

Since we are being authoritative, for underwater landscapes and true wide angle subjects, and for shallow dives, I would actually forget lights. I would also recommend going down the filter route for actual wide angle work on action cams at diving depths. Reason is that the field of view on action cams is extremely wide, and your lights will be largely ineffective for anything more than about 2 m from the camera. And sunlight will overpower your lights in the shallows. So I would save those lights for medium and close-up shots, deep and night dives, but forget about lights for wide-angle. The key is to shoot in a flat profile (log), and to set your white balance point in post. This approach is a tried and tested way which will give you much better results than any in-camera tweaking, including GoPro Labs customisations. And yes, using a good filter does make sense for ambient light WA at diving depths, as it helps mitigate colour casts and achieve a more even colour balance in post in these shooting situations. That is what filters are actually for, not for “bringing back the reds”, contrary to what many people seem to believe. Using a filter gives better results than not using one when shooting ambient-light wide angle footage in a flat profile, as it helps manage the colour cast created by water’s filtration at diving depths when resetting white balance in post. It avoids pushing WB to extremes when dealing with the colour cast (which distorts overall colour balance), preserves cleaner chroma information, and it also helps maintain consistency across shots/depth. As a small reminder to the nay-sayers, filters are still commonly used on cine cameras such as REDs by professional, blue-chip camera operators shooting in specific wide angle situations. Do you really think the capabilities of a cinecam shooting in REDCODE RAW are inferior to those of an action cam? It's time to stop believing in miracles, shooting in RAW or in LOG does not suspend physics... Neither do GoPro Labs hacks for that matter. Back to actual action cams, check out this workflow for inspiration and more info on the subject: https://waterpixels.net/articles/articles_technique/afterhours-magic-ambient-light-video-workflow-for-action-cameras-r161/ Regarding filters themselves, there are gel alternatives you can try (see above thread for links). They are inexpensive and will fit inside the newer GoPro dive housings, between the camera lens and housing port, allowing them to be used with any wide lens. They will likely give better results than Polarpro filters, which were not really designed with an understanding of the effect filters should have on the ambient light spectrum, unlike more researched filters like the UR-Pro Cyan or Keldan Spectrum filters. On white balancing in post, I will throw in a YouTube video of my own, since this seems to be a growing trend in action cam discussions. I am very much on the same page as what Mark is doing here with his GP12 log footage: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7DRmzwaO7YU No, he doesn't use filters but the logic is the same. And yes, I still believe a filter would still help for wide angle situations for the reasons mentioned above, even when shooting in log and using multiple gopro labs hacks, since log is just a flat profile, and not a miracle. At the end of the day, a camera can only do so much underwater, and no, it's not just about boosting that red channel because reds are absorbed by water... It's not as simple as that, unfortunately. cheers ben

Thanks @Chris Ross - It's amazing how small the Zen mini dome is, especially compared to the 8-15. Good call on the Pany 8mm having a bit of a CA. Nice galleries! Love seeing the coral walls.

hello , Selling a Weefine WFS 007 flash unit, like new, sold complete in its original box (purchased from Subchandlers in June 2024). Includes spare O-ring, grease, battery, charger, ball/YS mount, etc. As pictured :) The circular flash is very high quality and the 3000 lumen lamp is pretty cool. I'm selling it to upgrade to something more powerful. More photos available upon request. price : 350€ shipped in europe ( i m in france ) if you have question or more , i will answer with pleasure :) have a nice day

@Davide DB thanks :)

coucou , je suis du loiret ! loin de la mer , @caolla : frenchie aussi ? :) from french loiret , far from the sea !! @davide DB : thanks :)