Spotting light for YS-90DX

Hi,

Can anybody advise on a good spotting light setup for night photography with the YS-90DX? Is a "rubber band" approach the way to go, or are there any better solutions around? And which make/model of torch might be suitable?

The camera is a Coolpix 995 - not the best low-light autofocus systems around, so I guess the choice of torch has to take this into consideration!

Many thanks,

John

..and not an aiming light, you might try one of the Princeton Tec headlights. I use one at night to free up my hands. The 'head' of the light is adjustable up and down so you can position it not to shine in your buddies face . The elastic headband contraption is adjustable and really pretty comfortable. I wear my mask over it. Works for me.

Thanks Dee.

From your description, I guess I need an aiming light and not a spotting light!

Basically what I am after is a light to affix to the strobe in order to aim the strobe at the subject, and to give enough light for the camera to autofocus properly.

But a Princeton Tec headlight or somethimg similar would be useful anyway. Thanks for the tip.

What type of housing/tray setup are you using? I have an Ultralight tray that has a ball connector on the bottom that holds a UK mini Q-40.

It is a Aquatica housing with the standard tray and Aquatica's own TLC arm

you could also try this product from Aquavit

I use a UK SL4 on a ultralight adapter. Visit their website they have ball mounted adapters for a wide range of torches. The Q40 is very bright for its size but if you want to use it as your dive light as well it doesn't have much punch or burn time. Also the twist to light feature can be cumbersome. Look for a light with an easy to flip switch.

That strobe attachement in the previous post looks handy but if your strobe isnt aimed at your center of focus (like in a wide angle shot) the aiming light won't help with your autofocus much.

I have just tried my first night dive with my 4040/PT10/DX90 - being my first night dive I was completely unprepared so I taped my back up torch to my strobe and set the light/strobe to aim 1 meters in fornt of the lens and then dove with intention of only taking shots at 1 meter.

I discovered quite a host of little problems which could be listed as:

1) As both hand were taken up with the camera I could not use the dive torch I had (stupdily) attached to my wrist.

I over came this by leaving the torch that was taped to the strobe on and used it as my dive light as well as aiming light.

2) I could not see any of the controls on the back of the strobe to do "bracketing" with the DX90.

3) I could see the buttons o the back of the PT10 from the faint light let off by the LCD but the screen at the top was un-seeable. Consequently I felt for program mode and left it there.(whether this had any use I am not sure)

4) All the movement of using the setup as the dive light moved the camera line out of sync with the aiming light - the PT10 with the counter weight seems prone to this slippage and consequently quite a few of the shots were out of frame.

5) Whilst my "aiming light" was great for seeing everything as a dive light - I could see very little in the LCD screen and a lot of guess work on framing ensued.

All in all I was quite impressed with some of the results - considering they were total luck - but was left with the impression that a head mounted light was a dfinite need if I try it again in the future - just to see what I am doing.