Awesome UW light set up...DIY

I have been following the project of the Underwater Realm in the UK for some time now on vimeo: http://vimeo.com/realmpictues. They are making a series of underwater films with the R3D Epic and plan to show them at the Cannes Film Festival this next year. In doing their project they found the need for studio type lighting in their UW scenes so the made their own lights. And for the application, I must say, genius. The link below is a two part video of the system they created.

http://vimeo.com/28317446

Currently they are in need of funding and have turned to Kickstarter.com to solicit funds. http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/realmp...nderwater-realm

I have no affiliation with this project, but thought some people would really be interested. If you donate $50, you can get the DIY plans for their light system, which they say cost about $1500 to build two banks of lights and a battery pack that can last for almost 8 hours. Obviously there are restrictions to be connected to the battery pack, but like I said, for a specific application, it looks really good.

As always with UW video, light is the main issue. I could see these types of lights being used to light up a reef in controlled conditions or lakes or quarries (as they used them).

Again, I have no affiliation with this project, but I may donate to get the light plans.

Thanks for an interesting link, the lights look interesting to me. I might donate $50 to get the drawings...

// Alex

Thanks for the link. I learnt a lot about all sorts of aspects of movie production from their excellent series of video blogs on Vimeo. I just sent them $50 to back the project and to get the drawings. I have a Chinese imitation of the original Kino Flo lights that I use for hotel shoots etc., but these look like a very interesting option even for topside use. I also think those strips of LEDs they use could be adapted to make a smaller camera-mounted light... something like an underwater equivalent of Litepanels. So I might look into that once I get the drawings.

Great project!!