GoPro without strobe--OK for deep dives?

Hi! I'm a newbie UW photographer about to go on a liveaboard to Cocos Island, a trip of a lifetime with sharks, sharks, sharks. I'm renting a GoPro and now at the last minute they tell me it doesn't come with an extra video light. They say it has white balancing which will be fine. Is this true? Most of the dives will be near 100' and I don't want subpar photos. I don't want to invest in my own camera yet, but I also don't want to miss out on good photos. If the GoPro without video light isn't good enough, I'm looking at a SeaLife with video light (which isn't cheap! I'd rather rent at this point). Thank you so much in advance for your advice!

UPDATE: looks like I've found a new GoPro with video light setup from another place to rent, so I'm all good!

You might think twice about trying to use lights at all. Unless you plan to be within a meter of those sharks, or have acquired lights in the multi-thousand lumen range, that setup isn't likely to illuminate much at all.

I would be looking into color correction filters instead (as well as learning how to white balance on the camera and/or in post production). Here is just one example, there are others:

http://www.backscatter.com/sku/bs-flip31-combo.lasso

As mentioned, I would skip lighting and get a simple point and shoot camera. In people's mind, they think they'll capture amazing photos on their once-in-a-lifetime trip. In reality, you may just get frustrated with your equipment and photo quality, instead of enjoying the experience. GoPro's are not as easy as you'd think. If you put an LCD back on it, you have barely any battery life. But without one, its hard to see what you are recording. Plus, its got only two buttons on it, underwater, you could just be cycling through the myriad of menus, and again, without the battery sucking LCD pack, its quite hard. Then you may decide to let it run constantly, and when you get back, you have gigabytes of data to sort through to find that one memorable shot you think you got. The GoPro is quite wide angle view, getting a light powerful enough to illuminate more than a fraction of the frame is not cheap, and even then, its only good for a meter or two meters.

I recommend getting a little sony/canon/olympus camera and the factory plastic housing and no strobes or lights (I started off with a Canon S90). They are easy to use and unobtrusive, have a nice screen and long enough battery life to use it during a dive (buy an extra battery). And you can add strobes/lights and wet lenses to them later.

Hey salsaphile1

I'm not a GoPro user but my partner has one and used it for the first time on a dive trip in Bonaire a couple of months ago. She had no dive light.

I have to say I was amazed at the image quality and the ease with which she knocked together a 2-3min video using the free GoPro software. And she is no photographer or software nut.

If the GoPro is the series 4 it does have a built-in screen on the back and she got roughly one and a half dives from a battery - say 90 minutes - although she did not have it running constantly.

None of us want subpar pics (!) and it does take a lot of time, patience and practice to come up with good images - depending, of course, on your definition of good images. But, like I say, I was seriously impressed with what a GoPro can produce and what you can do with the raw video.

Have brilliant trip and enjoy the images!