bghazzal

Thank you - it's all very fresh and still a good-way to go I think 😄 Well spotted for the exposure - I don't actually have auto-ISO on the camera - while settings are very close to the GH series, auto-ISO wasn't included in the mix - so this was all shot in manual at 125 ISO. Most critters were actually moving up and down in the water-column, so I was yo-yo'ing more than any self-respecting instructor should - even on nitrox - and I think what you're seeing is actually coming from depth/lighting change in manual mode. Boosting the power of my available artificial lighting should fix this by overpowering more of the ambient light I hope (that or focusing on critters doing more reasonable dive profiles 😁)

Thanks John - once I have a general idea of what I can use work with, I look for music to edit to, playing some clips with different sound proposal, see what works best for me - I then present the idea to a severe and more often than not grumpy commission, my wife's eyes and ears, see if she validates it or not. We're both former musicians, which doesn't really make it easier 😅 But all of this is probably a little futile in our day and age where a lot of videos are played on phones with sound off 😁

Thanks - I'm really getting into this kind of critters now, that and juvenile / larval forms, it's like a whole new world opening up, a candybox of shapes and motion - but not easy to access or record... and so much is up to conditions... 😅

If this helps, you can also forward the letters / emails to the Mexican Secretary of Tourism, which is the government department in charge of Mexico’s tourism promotion and development policy for national tourist activity and development zones (in conjunction with local Mexican states). The Mexican Secretary of Tourism's physical address is: Secretaría de Turismo Avenida Presidente Masaryk 172 Bosques de Chapultepec 11580 Ciudad de México MEXICO and this is their email address: [email protected] More info here https://www.gob.mx/sectur/en#198 and here http://www.sectur.gob.mx/ cheers b

Here's a little something I shot last week, just two days after the full-moon on the shores of the Lombok Strait in east Bali. Going to my usual critter hunting spot, I expected to spend the dive on the black sand as usual. But as I reached the edge of the plateau and the sandy-slope facing the deep waters of the strait, my attention was instantly caught byweird critters floating around everywhere, including quite a few jewels I'd never seen before... Water was quite clear, with a mild current, and I spent the whole dive hovering and drifting with the plankton, then returning to the same area and drifting again with a new subject. Wee! An exciting and fascinating day-dive - for someone in love larval and planktonic lifeforms at least 😅 - challenging, but a welcome change from the area's usual macro suspects ! Technically, shooting in the shallows in full-tropical morning light, I reached the limits of my 5000-ish lumen light supply (a single Backscatter MW4300 4000 lm + 2 Archons 1000 lm), so I experimented with light positioning, including black-backround type shots, to try to make up for that. Clearly what I was really really missing in this kind of shooting scenario was a powerful secondary light, and this has convinced me to invest in more artificial light in the near future, which should definitely help! I shot with +6 diopter and even went up +12.5, as some were quite tiny, manual focus as usual, 30fps. There's a definite learning curve as the critters are so light that body and camera movements affect them greatly for instance, and what worked best for filming was really hovering motionless and letting the current carry us along... A great dive overall where i drained the camera battery, and really good practice for bonfire-type shallow black-water shooting I plan on doing here as well. Equipment used: - Panasonic Lumix LX10 (LX9/LX15 in some locales) compact camera in a NALX10 Nauticam housing, AOI UCL-09 +18.5 diopter, Inon UCL-165M67 +6 diopter - Backscatter MW 4300 video light and two Archon D11V2 video lights - Shot in Amed, east Bali, in 4K 30fps, CineD profile cheers! ben

As an update Kraken have confirmed that all their lights above 2500 lumens are all COB and are all constant current / output On the Weefine/Kraken front, Kraken also specified that while they did share a factory with Weefine in the past, in the last several years Kraken has had its own factory and make their own lights, which would explain why the product ranges have now diverged so much. As a side note, from looking at quite a few products in the range, Kraken now seems to offer well thought-out products with important features where you want them: COB, constant output, decent battery design, and importantly tighter beam angles. Aah, beam-angles... Like constant output, video light beam angle is one of those things where a lack of customer education is letting manufacturers get away with a few cut corners... Online, most mid-range video light manufacturers (and their favorite influencer-mouthpieces, such is the twisted world we now live in...😅) will tout their super "wide beam" (typically 120°, sometimes even wider...) as a positive feature (perfect for video! will cover a wider area!) - when this is actually a by-product of poor reflector design / choices, and more often than not a way to lower costs... Most people here on WaP will already be aware of this, but since this thread is about important video light specs left out or, in this case, misrepresented by manufacturers, here's a reminder: for video - in most real world applications - you actually want a tighter beam (say 90°, 100° angle...) as this will simply give you more more light for a given lumen output. As often stated here, for the same lumen output a 90° beam angle will give roughly twice as much light falling on the subject than a 120° beam. And with the typical 2-light setup used in UW videography, two 90° beam lights will actually provide full coverage for lens with less than a 130° field of view (which goes for action cams, rectilinear lenses and WWL/WACP type lenses etc...). Meaning that for video lights, that super-duper "extra wide" beam is actually more a design defect than a feature... 😉 I would say constant output and beam angle are the two most commonly misunderstood / misrepresented video light specs. We could go even further and offer that beyond wonky-named manufacturers dreaming up fantasy-world lumen outputs for their wonky-buttoned lights, in the slightly more reputable world of the branded mid-range, it's probably this double-whammy of dimming-on-discharge + diffusion by wider beam angles which accounts for a lot - if not most - of the "this video light is not as bright as what it should be given stated lumens" complains often heard about mid-range products... This is probably not what your pusher outlet's infomercial review or shill ambassador-influencer's predicable video will be discussing when you end up clicking on a that click trolling engagement-generating thumbnail showing an unavoidably puzzled facial expression, but hey, that's what prehistoric relics such as forums are for, right? 😎 Returning to constant current/discharge/output issue at hand, I've asked Weefine the same question, not finding the data online, and waiting for an answer. If anyone has info on this, please share. cheers! ben

Hi - I'd just like to signal that the edit timeline is currently much less than 24 hours - probably 8 hours I'd guess. Being a little clumsy, I often come back to posts to try to correct typos, formatting etc, and have had my fingers snapped by the deadline a few times (just did now actually, paragraph I'd added was zapped as the thread was now edit-locked in the meantime) It would be great to return to 24 hours editing deadline if possible 🙏 Thanks! b

While this was probably the case in the past, this doesn't actually seem to be the case anymore. The factory issuing the products is probably the same (likely also covering the X-Adventurer brand) but the product range is quite different now. Here is the Weefine video light range: Smart focus Solar flare And here is the Kraken video light range: Hydra and LTD While some products are still similar - and design seems to indicate that they might be produced all by the same factory - the specs and features are quite different across the two brands (Kraken products are generally heavier, for instance, and Weefine leaning towards a higher price tier) That said, if Kraken lights are constant output, I would imagine Weefine lights are as well, but couldn't find confirmation (Kraken specs are more detailed and precise). Here's an example of Kraken lumen output test data:

Hello all, Looking for a set of video lights fitting my criteria, I've been bobbing around in a whirlpool of brands and specs for the past few days... It's all good, but one important specification which is very difficult to pinpoint is constant output / power discharge for video lights, which requires a control circuit to make sure the light has a stable output. If not, the light dims as battery drains, which means a steady loss of light power, rather than a timed, but constant output. In practice, this is a rather crucial spec for shooting video, but also one which is generally left out of available documentation (an easy test is to discharge the lights in a tub while taking a picture, using same exposure settings, every 15 minutes, to check if brightness drops - but this requires having the lights at hand...) To help future buyers, I'd like to try to sum up information avaialble per brand, so that we have comprehensive list of video light manufacturers (and eventually models) offering constant output video lights, and those that don't. At first glance, constant output video lights are clearly quite rare - probably because most manufacturers are aiming to keep costs lower by skipping the control circuit, since constant output isn't a feature sought by many users, who simply consider it normal/inevitable for the light to dim as battery power diminishes... Based on what I've gathered online, we can kind of make out the following (please correct or add details as required) BRANDS OFFERING CONSTANT OUTPUT VIDEO LIGHTS - Keldan - Light and Motion (Sola) - Sealife - Kraken (output test data given in docs) BRANDS OFFERING NON-CONSTANT OUTPUT VIDEO LIGHTS - BigBlue - SUPE - Scubalamp - Fotocore - Divevolk - Nitescuba - Archon - Orcatorch - Xtar - Tovatec - XLight - Almost all the non-branded / semi-branded direct import lights found on Amazon, Ali-Express, Ebay, Shopee, etc. (e.g. LetonPower, Thrustfire, Wurkkos etc) TO BE CONFIRMED - Backscatter (MW4300 for instance) - Inon - Weefine - Dive-Adventurer - DivePro - FixNeo - RGBlue - iTorch **** cheers ben

Are you sure that Weefine or Kraken have constant output / discharge? I've been looking into this but cannot find any tests to back it up. edit - for Kraken I found manufacturer give output test data Thanks!

stay away, well away.... The "list" is at least partially a copy-paste of existing classified listings... The Nauticam/Panasonic LX10 with Dual Big Blue 15,000 Video Lights Complete System caught my eye as I've seen the listing on another forum. It was sold on June 3rd.... https://scubaboard.com/community/threads/nauticam-panasonic-lx10-with-dual-big-blue-15-000-lumen-complete-system.647094/ and the source of the Sony RX100VA with Nauticam housing and Z330 Strobes and WWL-C wide angle listing is here: https://scubaboard.com/community/threads/sony-rx100va-with-nauticam-housing-and-z330-strobes-and-wwl-c-wide-angle-2500.624506/ you get the drift....

Not sure about that unfortunately - if you look at the 2019 document, wording is 16% tax on "photo and video recording equipment", and the allowance is, IIRC, one camera per traveller, meaning customs could likely consider the gopro or other action cams as a second camera should they wish to do so. They were probably focusing primarily on the most expensive items until now, but with action cam prices on the rise, and given how zealously the laws seemed to be applied given recent feedback (with reports of dive gear and golf clubs being taxed for instance) I wouldn't count on it if one is caught in the taxation whirlpool... But yes, best stay as inconspicuous as possible and hope for the green light...

I do the same, and have had to do it quite a few times actually, with my wife. Our strategy is actually 2 "fishing" / utility vests - can fit 6kg in each easily - when I was carrying the regs in carry-on (which I don't do anymore) I once had to place the two regs in the vest's zippered back pocket. Our strategy is to be nice and agreeable, show up early and be ready for action. 2 "personal items" (small back pack, computer), carryon backpack for my wife and super light 2 wheel roller for me. If we anticipate that it might be a tough check-in, we'll get the roller down to 7 kg, as this is the most commonly weighed carry-on, and check in with full-pockets. You get to know what to expect after a while, but there are always surprises. One notorious thing to look out for is the systematic weighing of rollers in Kuala Lumpur's Air Asia dedicated KLIA2 terminal (a special gate you go through) for instance. I always hand carry the roller in the queue and try to look comfy (rolling seems to increase attention and weight-checks). We check in the bags (as analog nomads without a home for a little under 10 years now, we're quite minimalist but with the dive gear, spares, pharmacy, tools and extra imaging stuff etc needed to live/work in remote areas like we have been doing we do have 3x 23kg check-in bags (2 120L Decathlon soft trekking bags, and one 100L), plus a lot of carryon (2 computers, camera, lenses, etc etc) If the carry-on is weighed, we step aside and proceed to fill the vests as much as possible. Also jacket pockets. No bum-bag but it sounds like a good idea. One idea I've been toying with is to strip the Nauticam compact housing of the tray, and a shoulder strap and carry it on me like a camera (with the camera inside), as it's quite heavy. After the great carry-on transfer, we proceed to re-weight, finish check-in then sit down somewhere and tranfer back to the carry-on. (re-weighing at the gate is rare on airlines we use - Jetstar is notorious, also for their food-hunt, as are some flights using small local planes in Indonesia, ATRs for instance) For the anecdote, last time we had to do the carryon-transfer was on our flight from Osaka in Japan to Guam and on to Palau, where we were going to work, in 2021. Very strict (which was rare in Osaka), and we almost missed the flight. But not because of luggage - carryon got weighed, we had to transfer and that solved it - but because they were afraid we would have entering Guam because regulation require a flight out, and they considered our ongoing flight to Palau was not a flight-out (because Palau is in Micronesia...) Despite explaining that Palau has been an independent country since 1994 and is not part of the Federated States of Micronesia, they wanted to take no chances of us being denied entry... We had to sign an form agreeing to uphold financial responsiblity for airfare if we were denied entry to Guam, and were allowed to board only at the very last minute... Just as cabin crew was about to prepare the plane for take off, someone hops on, moves to our row and tells us they reached Guam and it was confirmed it was ok (of course it was!) Gotta love Japan / flying and luggage.... 😁 (as an epilogue, our immigration process in Guam consisted of the following exchange: "where are you guys off to?" - "just transitting two nights, then off to Palau for work" "oh Palau, very nice, enjoy!")...

Unfortunately the print-out made by operators, which is probably the same as the one mentioned in the 2019 thread posted above, doesn't seem to have much effect. Camera in the housing might be a good idea - reading up officers had a tendency to consider housings as an extra camera - but if there are other accessories (lenses, domes, strobes, lights...) these can be subject to taxation as well. GoPro I guess you could keep in a jacket pocket somewhere? best of luck b

Regarding light positioning for black-water / bonfire type video, I've had some interesting info from Alexander Semenov, who shoots the amazing footage in the Aquatilis project Critters shot this way are mostly bigger than typical BW subjects, and setup primarily using is a triangular edge-lighting set up with wide, powerful lights. This is how he describes it, and helps shed a little light (pun) on the photos Davide posted earlier in the thread, which I'll repost below: "Two huge lights a bit behind the housing - you need to have triangular "dark zone" right in front of the port glass with no light at all and then set up the lights in a way that crossing of light beams will be just in a few cm closer to camera than focal plane. It's a bit tricky, but works like magic. And more light is always better."

Lovely, great bunch of critters you have there, and a welcome change from the usual tropical-water suspects! The lumpsuckers are incredible - it might not be a highlight, but I really love the night shot of the school of Pacific herrings! cheers b

Thanks Jochen, glad you find the discussion interesting! For the grey card, I would say yes, if you can be bothered to do it. It will be more precise, and having the same exact same reference (especially a good one like a wb card) on different clips make life easier in post. The only issue is that white balance is also relative to the distance to a subject, and you will be holding it at arm's length on a cam with a relatively wide lens, which might be a little close, but it still usually works quite well. And even if it doesn't, it's only one possible reference point. Since you'll be picking the WB setting point in post anyway, so if you find it doesn't work as well on a shot, you can always choose another one. I didn't carry a card for most of the GoPro footage I've shot, but found myself using mostly the same references in post for tropical ambient light, mostly: Other diver's tanks (works really well, especially aluminium tanks like AL80s), diver's bubbles, also the classical sand (sand can be a bit of a hit and miss depending on conditions and sand type), or bits of white rocks in the sand. Certain light skin tones / fin colours (white Gull fins...) can be good as well. If there is a reef, there's often a piece of bleached coral somewhere (tips) or other whitish elements in the substrate. But filming a proper WB card will help with consistancy - just film it a couple of second at the start like you said, holding the card as far as you can reach and in the direction of your shot and ideally with the sun in your back, like you would for manual white balancing. Looking forward to seeing the results. DaVinci is great for grading - if you put sufficient time learning to use it. I'd started working on it but unfortunately my current laptop isn't powerful enough to get fluid playback, even running from an external SSD and using proxies, whereas FCPX works fine natively that way. There was the option to edit in FCPX, export to DaVinci to grade, but with no fluid playback on DaVinci it's a nightmare. Planning on jumping in again when I have access to more processing power. cheers b

Problem is it's not clear if actual corruption, or (over)zealous application of existing (but in this case, certainly questionable) laws... To give another non-tax related example, most non-US citizens have to purchase an ESTA to transit through the international area of any US based airport for instance - this is something which is rarely found elsewhere, when only switching planes and not leaving the international transit area (ie. not clearing immigration or customs). Yet this paying process is part of US regulations, and something travelers transiting through the international area of an airport on US soil have to comply with to switch planes in the USA. The ESTA is valid 3 years IIRC. Another example in Indonesia, this time: people planning to use their mobile phones in Indonesia for more than 90 days (tourists visas go up to 180 days) have to register their IMEI / phones at customs (phone is blocked beyond that) There is a $500 USD value-allowance for the phone. Beyond that, the phone is taxed, based on its value (looked up online). Taxation rate is 40% of the remaining value after being discounted $500 USD. People who have a residence permit and/or an Indonesian tax number ID (ie residents and Indonesian citizens) pay 30% instead of 40%. However, tourists / people staying less than 90 days in Indonesia can use their phones without registration (or tax payment), which constitutes both a free allowance and a grace period. Back to photo/video equipement, if you look at the 2019 WeP thread, you can see pictures of the import forms photographers were given, which look quite official normal (16% import tax for the import of "photo and video recording items) As a foreigner, it's generally quite difficult to file a complaint for corruption anywhere, but given the forms issued here, it seems very unlikely to lead to anything. What would be the base of the complaint other than one is not actually "importing" their personal equipment in this case? While there might certainly be some corruption and abuse of authority by customs officers, I'm suspecting that they're just being (over)zealous in this case, and that, as Chris suggested, existing, enforceable laws are actually in place. There's quite a lot of surveillance / security at major international airports, which tends to discourage basic, bill-in-hand type corruption. And previously mentioned, it's a general trend, and Mexican travellers entering their country are also getting hit pretty bad by the same regulations. The way out would be for the authorities to define / clarify the parameters for tourists, and set an allowance (based on value, visa type, time in the country, like in the Indonesian mobile phone example...) for personal goods to be used on a holiday in Mexico. But this would require pressure from Mexico's Secretariat of Tourism, and tourism operators... b

I agree, but keep in mind it's not uncommon for "electronics" (computers, phones, cameras...) to be taxed differently (heavier) than sporting-goods. And things are changing, I don't know about bicycles, but there are reports of tourist's dive gear getting taxed on arrival , as well as golf-gear ( see this Reddit thread from two months ago, a tourist paid 19% import tax on his golf clubs in Cancun, for example) It's a general protectionist trend, and not really new (the BCS camera-tax became more systematic in 2019) When I was living/working in Mexico in 2018, importing dive equipment from the USA already incurred non-neglibeable customs duties (I remember being surprised by the amount when buying an SMB fron Jim Carter in Florida - free shipping to La Paz, but hefty import duties...). Beyond Mexico a couple of years back I sent back my (well-used) hiking shoes, from Japan to EU Europe and had to pay import tax (on my own used, personal goods, which had been bought in Europe, so tax paid...) The main issue I see here is taxation of tourists' personal, used gear (electronic or otherwise) which is to be used on a holiday and taken back out of the country on departure. This doesn't really make sense (as it is not an import per se) and is definitely detrimental to the country's tourism industry.

Ooh that's very nice - it looks like height can be adjusted, which was my main issue with flip-mount options As previously mentioned and illustrated, I use cheap readers for macro, and they work great - but it's important for me to be able to adjust their position easily (bottom half of the mask when I'm spotting, right in the middle when I'm shooting). I have mine with a strap, but this looks like nice and solid alternative! However I use mine on my single glass frameless mask though, and these look like they're designed to make use of the frame on double-lense mask Great idea though. Keep readers close to the glass and it just... works

It's a little bit more complicated than that. If you read up on this WeP thread and Scubaboard thread you'll see that some operators had actually created a printout in Spanish for divers to show at customs, and it wasn't much help. In 2019 customs were hitting divers with 16% of value for photographic items (housings, domes, strobes etc...). So far Quintana Roo wasn't concerned, it was mostly a Baja California Sur habit, but it seems to have spread first to DF and now Quintana Roo. I would recommend avoiding confrontational attitudes as much as possible in these kind of situations, do try to talk things out, but avoid confrontation, as customs agents have quite a bit of power, and xenophobia is growing in the global South as well... My Mexican friend almost ended up in a lockup for attempting corruption after offering to "even things out" with the customs officer - as is often done with authority figures in these kind of situations - so don't count too much on the power of well-earned (yankee) dollars 😉

As a side-note, it's not just the camera tax - import (?) taxation and enforcement has generally become very severe recently and this encouraged governmental guidelines. I was taking to a Mexican friend about this a couple of months back, he had some pretty chilling experiences at Mexico city airport this year, travelling on a Mexican passport (not diving / camera related, but this does seem to be a general trend in the country - I'm not surprised it is spreading) Similarly, Indonesia introduced some pretty drastic customs measures for "passengers entering from abroad" this year (e.g. electronics: maximum 5 units and with maximum value FOB US$ 1,500; see details here ) but has since backtracked on these measures, which were unclear and doomed to cause chaos at airports...

I was shooting in MF and following with focus peaking - I switched on AF to see if it helped but given the chaos it was easier to track with peaking (which I don't have with AF, unless focus is locked) But once light position is set, it should be a question of keeping them in the light, like snooting a moving critter. But these are super fast indeed, and small... My main worry is actually that I might have bumped into the LX10's lens limitations when it comes to size/movement for video... Zooming-in, which I must do to get the proper magnification, works fine for filming tiny critters when they're stationary or slow, but when they're flying around like this, even if you keep them in focus long-enough, the speed of the background blur makes for an uncomfortable, sea-sickness inducing watch... It's something I noticed shooting during the day as well - I have some stable, in-focus shots of small fast moving critters that are not nice to watch because they're zoomed in, and you have a background like a fast-flowing river, which is not a pleasant watch... My hope for black-water is to try to isolate them more, so that the background is black, which might be a way to get around this issue. However, a major issue remains: the movement patterns of such tiny planktonic critters (which I believe are actually feeding in the light) is very erratic. During the day, the fast moving critters where moving in a relatively straight line, but these guys are way more random, which means more camera movement to follow. Unfortunately, even if the shot is stable and in focus, camera movement is amplified when zoomed in / long focal length, and not really nice. Solution would be not to zoom and use actual macro lens, but I can't on a compact... Tricky, tricky... Especially if i drop resolution to 1080p to get 60fps, meaning I can't plan on cropping in post... Filming fast movement zoomed-in is really my main concern at the moment, not sure if I can find some way to make it work for fast-moving tiny critters (other than focusing on slower / bigger ones, if they exists!) The subject-background-movement problem is one of those specific video-shooting issues, really marked for longer focal lengths / telephoto... You're right for the light position - I need to find a compromise between a workable focusing area to track the critters and isolating them more. Plan is to do some dry testing to see what the options are! cheers b

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

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