night dive lighting

I have a new rig, only done day dives with it and wondering about night diving.

I have a Fantasea nano connected above a G9 OEM case with two Z240's. If I use the lights on the Z240s and the nano, is that enough light for a night dive without additional lighting?

Or will I need additional lighting?

I am hoping for making the texas flower garden trip at end of May and expect to try a night dive while there.

Based on above water trials, I am thinking I need more light to navigate.

What LIGHT can you shed topic on this for me?

Dave

Dave,

I think of lighting for night diving in two ways; finding & shooting. My wife, who doesn't do photography, spots for me on most of my night dives. She uses a fairly bright UK or PC light. I now have a Fantasea 360, but not tried it out yet. I have mounted the smallest UK light directly in line with the lens. I use a medium strong red filter on it. I place just the dimmer edge of the light on the subject so as not to spook it. All my Nikons seem to focus well with the relatively dim red light; don't know how the G9 will do. If I were night diving w/o a spotter, I will rig the LED 360 over the port on the housing and have a red filter to flip over the light for the shot. I think your nano beam may be too narrow for a good findering light.

CAVATE: Having burned through 3 dive lights on one night dive and using my strobe flashes to navigate through the surge, I now carry several, new and reliable lights.

Bob

I found the Inon's great for night diving. Certainly not to confuse them with a good handheld but adequate enough to light up the area and navigate.

Thanks for the feedback everyone.

Deep6, I am looking forward to hearing about your Fantasea 360 experience. I am seriously considering buying one but want to know if its bright enough for the 'finding' portion.

I will not have a spotter for my night dives. More likely, I will end up as most photographers do underwater - quite some distance from others due to pausing to line up a photo, etc. as they fin along. I also agree that the nano is likely not enough.

It seems there is no middle ground for lights that sense a flash and turn off for a second. You are either using a light of limited strength for well under $100 or you are spending $300+ for what should be a great light. Does it seem that way to others?

Why not program the Fantasea LED 44 for strobe use? Costs a bit more than the current model? I would pay it for more lighting. I am alone in this?

Thanks for the feedback everyone.

Deep6, I am looking forward to hearing about your Fantasea 360 experience. I am seriously considering buying one but want to know if its bright enough for the 'finding' portion.

Yo Dave,

The 360 LED is rated at 3 Watts - 120 Lumens and cost $53 USD. Bright enough & cheap enough? It is considerably larger than your Nano.

Regards,

Bob

I'm a week-and-a half back from Indonesia (Alex Mustard's Ultimate Indonesia, not to be confused with Eric Cheng's mammoth Ultimate Indonesia), where the night diving is amazing: images in a few days, I hope, when my computer cools down.

I think that there is a misapprehension that a lot of light is needed: I used a tiny FantaSea LED light, and not my Inon modelling lights, and even with a red filter on the LED my 60mm micro lens focussed smoothly. My 17-55mm was also fine. My 105mm micro wouldn't work in AF, and did need more light, but my guess is that it would have worked with a D300 or D700, or a Canon.

The little light is fine for spotting, and doesn't disturb fish, especially with a red filter in place.

The role of a bigger light is, I think, to act as an alternative to strobes, not to blast the environment with light.

Strobe modelling lights point in strange directions, and I don't find them very helpful.

Tim

Tim,

Congrats on being able to take such a great trip.

The nano fantasea light with red cover was bright enough to find things to photo? I have not tried my on a night dive yet but it did not seem bright enough. Yours was sufficient or did you use some other method for finding subjects and then used that light for focusing?

You make a good point about the strobe lights. I was hoping they would put out light for general lighting, not subject lighting.

thanks,

Dave

http://apnewton.blogspot.com/2009/03/fanta...ocus-light.html

Just tried out a Fantasea LED 360. Very impressed.

I used the LED 44 a couple of trips as a back-up light. This LED 360 looks like a good improvement over the LED 44, notably the much longer battery life and the light turning off with strobe flash.

I shoot INON Z-240s but I do not use the modeling lamps at all, for anything.

Presently, I have underslung the tray a pair of Aquastar 1 watt Aquatecs which in clear tropical water are more than good enough to find my way around and spot subjects. They also double as W/A focus lamps when shooting in low light, ie. wreck interiors and caves. I have another Aquatec mounted on a ULCS three way clamp as a macro focus lamp. Its light is a bit intense for this use and I attenuate the beam with an opaque 35mm film tub. I have just purchased a pair of Fisheye LED48DX which have a dimmer and may replace the Aquatecs...

The nano fantasea light with red cover was bright enough to find things to photo? I have not tried my on a night dive yet but it did not seem bright enough. Yours was sufficient or did you use some other method for finding subjects and then used that light for focusing?

I found it OK with a 60mm: plenty of light (eyes are better than chips) to see subjects close-up, but not very good to scan more than a couple of feet ahead. AF was OK. Having said that the Lembeh Resort guides and Graham Abbott (Diving 4 Images) are so good that you didn't have to look for critters yourself, just follow the guides' light...

Tim

Thanks for all the information and feedback.

I ordered the Fantasea LED 360 today.

Have night dives planned at Roatan and Tx flower gardens in May and cannot wait!

I have a new rig, only done day dives with it and wondering about night diving.

I have a Fantasea nano connected above a G9 OEM case with two Z240's. If I use the lights on the Z240s and the nano, is that enough light for a night dive without additional lighting?

Or will I need additional lighting?

 

I am hoping for making the texas flower garden trip at end of May and expect to try a night dive while there.

Based on above water trials, I am thinking I need more light to navigate.

What LIGHT can you shed topic on this for me?

 

Dave

It has very much to do with the viz. In tropical waters and a full moon you hardly need any light. Maybe for focus depending on the lens and camera.

In Sweden (and similar places) where the viz is low, you need as much as you can afford. The bigger, larger, stronger, wider, the better. The viz makes the light work only a few meters and anything outside the beam is totally black.

/Peter

Dave:

You will want to keep a buddy "nearby" on the night dive, unless you're solo rigged and certified. The ship will be pretty well lit with a huge strobe beneath it on a downline, and all the above-waterline lights on making a big conic penumbra with the boat as a shadow in the middle, but at 70+ ft deep with varying viz, it can be pretty dark. End of May this year begins the waning crescent of the moon, too.

Boat rules for FG are that each buddy team has *three* lights - one each, plus one 'backup' per team. Your focus light attached to your rig can count as one, but you'll still have at least another in a BC pocket.

I'm so nearsighted I get serious sensory deprivation (or glare-blindness, from the idiot pointing his light in my face) on night dives, so my plan for my first FG trip with a real camera rig was just going to be to hang off the downlines with my back to the strobes and try for some barracuda shots in the middle depths. I never did take my old PnS down on the night dive on earlier FG visits. Call me a coward if you want.