Focusing during a night dive with red floodlight

I have an Olympus E-PL5 and twin strobes and I have purchased a new Sola 800 video light, hoping to use it primarily for a focus light when it is throwing out red light as this seems to spook the fish less. However I found during my dive last night that although my camer focuses I cannot tell exactly what it is focusing on because the red light floods the screen.

Sorry if I have not explained this very well but has anyone had similar experiances and come up with a solution?

I'm assuming you're dealing with an electronic viewfinder. Are their any viewfinder brightness or contrast or RGB level options you can adjust for night dives? Does the camera support any focus peaking type highlighting options you could set for a different color (white, yellow) so it would show up in contrast to the red ambient view and thus at least help you see the outlines of what's presently focus locked?

I have a sort of similar issue with the Sony SLT-A55. The original SLTs (A-33, A-55) always try to give a what-you-see-is-what-you-get view related to your settings, which means that if the camera doesn't know strobes are present (manual synced, not TTL-connected) the viewfinder helpfully goes "black" with settings like ISO400, f8, 1/160th in dim underwater conditions, although the AF boxes still light up green because the AF module has plenty of light to focus lock. My only solution was to go to a TTL connection or like you are experimenting with provide a butt-ton of focus light. That much focus light of course scares off critters and is still less than a strobe so I'd barely see what I was trying to frame...the TTL is the more usable option for me. (Newer Sony SLTs have a menu option to disable this 'setting effect' on the electronic viewfinder so the view always mimics ambient levels instead of the setting levels.)

Thanks, looks like I will have to scour the user manual. However I know what I am looking for now.

Please post back if you find a solution you like for other Olympus users. I'm not sure my Sony-based rough ideas were really that helpful.