Video lights for digital UW photography

Have anyone successfully tried to use video lights for digital uw photography? Of course a powerful upper end light system will be needed, but what about picture quality, colours, shadows. Could anyone comment/advice?

I've used a UK HID Light Cannon, mounted on a 12 inch Ultralight arm via the ball joint adapter, with my Oly 4040. Obviously, it's useless for wide angle illumination, but it's pretty darn good for macro work. (see http://www.pbase.com/benkao for some pics) It seems to also help with focusing, especially at night. If you do use a light, make sure you mount a diffuser, otherwise the light can be very harsh.

Just my 2 cents.

Spinner, that's as nice a group of photos as I've seen lately.

I noticed that most of your macros were shot at F10. Did you use aperature priority or manual?

If you used the Light Cannon, did you turn the strobe off?

Karl

Thanks for the kind words!

I shot on manual, although I guess aperture priority probably would have worked fine too. I'm just more used to manual.

I shot at F10 to try to reduce the background to a dark blue or black, and if there was not too much sediment in the water, I left the onboard strobe on. If backscatter would be a problem, I turned off the strobe, moved the light as close as I could, and if necessary opened up the aperture by a stop or two.

I've got a DS 125 now (whoopee!), so now I have no excuses to fall back on for bad wideangle shots....

Off to Palau and Truk in 7 days!

Ben

4040, PT010, UK HID, DS125

(new arrival....Nik V, SB105, Sea & Sea 18 mm lens. Sacrilege...film!)

Thanks Spinner. Nice pictures!

Why is everyone talking so much about the DS125? Is it that good? Looking on its datasheet I am only impressed by the recycle time. 110 wattsec and guidenumber is midrange. I was also planning to buy it before I saw the data sheet (and I am living outside the US where it isn't available yet).

It is if you want to shoot TTL with pre-flash digital cameras

Karl

Here are some pix shot w/ a Coolpix990 and Ikelite 100w video lite:

http://www.reefpix.org/fiji/

http://www.reefpix.org/coralspawn/

HTH

James

[Edited on 6-3-2002 by jamesw]

Thanks everyone for your advice.

So in summary we could say about using video lights for uw photography:

- Possible for macro

- Somewhat useful nighttime

- May scare away some fishes daytime

- Powerful strobe needed for wide angle

I guess I go for 2 DS125 or the Sea&Sea DX90 and a powerful focuslight when necessary.

Thanks everyone!

Thomas

I've used some Under Sea Video Housings video lights (http://www.usvh.com) and they're interesting. Very bright at short range and excellent battery life of 90 minutes or so. They are a bit heavy as everything including battery is contained in the light head, but that's only an issue topside, u/w they're very close to neutral. As other have mentioned this type of light is only really good for macro, shade and nighttime work; in daylight they are easily overpowered by ambient light.

See http://www.seanansorge.com/scuba for photo galleries using these lights. The Palau 2000 and Bonaire 2001 pages used these lights with a Sony DSC-S70 in an Ikelite housing. The Monterey March 2002 gallery was shot with a Canon S40 in the Canon housing, which is much much smaller but I think the Sony took better pictures.

I'm planning to house my Canon D60 soon, but I'll probably keep these lights for nighttime use. They have a very wide angle dispersion and are excellent for night dives.