Focus Light Strength: How much is needed?

What is your experience?

How many Lumens are needed in a Focuslight?

It seems like a lot of you are using some sort of Sola and a lot the Sola 500.

To which level do you dim to?

I am interested to know the needed amount of Lumens for a Focus light!

/Erik

Using a Sola 800, I find that I play around with the levels constantly, depending on the shot.

If you are using manual focus, you need enough light for you to see by. What I find myself doing most is leaving the settings at the mid level, and thumbing between white and red. Sometimes, the red doesn't seem like enough to see clearly so I push it up to max. The white I mostly put to max when I'm under or inside of something and I'm using the sola as my only light.

A lot of it depends on the viewfinder, as well as the particular scene you're trying to frame.

Smaller, crop-DSLR viewfinders, you might want more focus light. Huge FF pentaprisms, maybe not so much.

And in my case, Sony-A55 with electronic viewfinder, first generation, that 'helpfully' goes black with manual settings and a manually synced strobe (camera doesn't know strobe is there, and is trying to give you a preview of how lit it thinks the shot will be), I need a LOT of focus light or my view is sometimes nonexistant. (All later SLTs from Sony have the ability to disable this 'feature'.)

I use the Sola 800 as well and couldn't be happier with its performance. I especially like the red light option, which makes it easier to sneak up on unsuspecting fishies like Mandarin fish.

I agree that proper red light is good UW. It simply spooks them less.

Manual with non-DSLRs or eltronic viewfinder systems. Then I clearly understand that you want a lot of light.

A Sola 500/800 has 500/800 Lumens at maximum light output. How often are you actually using the full power of it?

When used as a Focus Ligth ( Video is different issue).

My experience is that a lot of light tend to spook the fishes or the Nudis turn around "faster" etc etc.

/Erik