Need a little help pre-planning for Big Pelagic trip

I am booked on an April liveaboard trip to Socorro Island, where there will be mantas, sharks, dolphins, and perhaps other large species. My concern is my lighting for either video or stills is not powerful enough, and wanted some other opinions. Generally, I'm a macro guy. 

Gear: 

Olympus TG6
Wide Angle Wet Lens 120°
Two Sea and Sea YS-01s (gn 20)
Two Big Blue 4200 lumen lights

I would spring for the YS-D2js (still looking for used), except now the D3s are coming out, and of course, at a premium price, which is also killing me. Part of me wants to use what I have, but the other part says I may never have enough money for another trip like this, and want the best possible shot at great images/vids.  

I would appreciate any ideas, thoughts, comments from the more experienced wide angle big fish guys & gals. 

Thanks in advance, 

Stu Beans

Have you thought about renting the lights just for the trip? Reef Photo rents lights and will credit your rental purchase toward a future purchase, if you're looking to upgrade your S&S strobes in the future.

Stu

I did Socorro last April on the Nautilus Explorer and had the same concerns... great trip by the way. It was my first venture into this type of trip.

My plan was to use continuous light with a pair of Sola 3800 lumen video lights. I did about three dives with that set up and switched to strobes for the duration. There was nowhere near enough light for stills. 

The dives tended to be deep (100ft) and the visibility was not great. Also the diving was "heavy" with lots of gear and thicker wetsuits than I am used to. Keeping as streamlined as possible was key to keeping gas consumption under control. I usually ran out before my non-photo buddies.

I pretty much did the whole trip with my 13mm Nikonos RS. I used the Superdome on a couple of dives with the 8-15mm FE but noticed way more drag when swimming.

Also, heads up on the customs scam at the Cabo airport. I got dinged for my housing and strobes.

Having said all that, the boat and crew were awesome, and the marine life spectacular:)

ian

1 hour ago, rgilkes said:

Have you thought about renting the lights just for the trip? Reef Photo rents lights and will credit your rental purchase toward a future purchase, if you're looking to upgrade your S&S strobes in the future.

I had not thought of that, thank you. Website shows the Inon Z-330 for rent for 300 bucks/7 days, which is nearly half the cost of the light... (I'd need it for 10 days). Ponder this I will. 

38 minutes ago, ianmarsh said:

Stu

I did Socorro last April on the Nautilus Explorer and had the same concerns... great trip by the way. It was my first venture into this type of trip.

My plan was to use continuous light with a pair of Sola 3800 lumen video lights. I did about three dives with that set up and switched to strobes for the duration. There was nowhere near enough light for stills. 

The dives tended to be deep (100ft) and the visibility was not great. Also the diving was "heavy" with lots of gear and thicker wetsuits than I am used to. Keeping as streamlined as possible was key to keeping gas consumption under control. I usually ran out before my non-photo buddies.

I pretty much did the whole trip with my 13mm Nikonos RS. I used the Superdome on a couple of dives with the 8-15mm FE but noticed way more drag when swimming.

Also, heads up on the customs scam at the Cabo airport. I got dinged for my housing and strobes.

Having said all that, the boat and crew were awesome, and the marine life spectacular:)

 

ian

Thanks Ian. I'm not too worried about diving 'heavy'. I trained in the northeast of USA, and dive plenty of 5 mil diving here in FLA during the winter months. Crap vis would sure concern me though. I generally use my Big Blue lights for video, never really for stills. What strobes did you use? 

Sounds like you had an awesome trip. Any humpbacks? Thanks for the customs tip. I need to dig into that more. 

Retra V1

I had hoped to use continuous light for rapid sequence, dolphins etc. Nowhere near enough light for that.

Humpback mother and calf... did not approach, all the usual suspects every dive, whale sharks, one tiger shark.

The boat had a resident videographer called Adil who produced an amazing video for the trip... well worth the money for me as I don't do any useful video. But I will say if you were diving near him, you were always in the thick of the action...

ian

Have you considered shooting in ambient light?

Codes of conduct for responsible diving with large pelagic recommend to minimise use of flash or strong artificial light (some even prohibit flash).

Also, the size of these pelagic make it very difficult to light them properly with strobes or lights. Unless you are very close (<3m) to these pelagic (again against responsible diving rules), few strobes or lights will manage to provide good lighting of these subjects.

For good ambient light pictures, shoot in raw and correct color in post-processing in Lightroom/Camera Raw.

To facilitate post-processing, use a small white balance card, take shots of the card regularly as you change depth.

A magic filter may be useful to get better reds at depth > 10m.

A WB card and filter will be much lighter to dive with than big strobes/lights (and much more affordable).

I suspect unless Im really close to the subjects, strobes won't be making a big difference regardless of power. I went back and looked at others images and vids from their trips, the majority seem to be ambient. Appreciate the posts from all, thank you folks. 

I will say that with the mantas, I sometimes had problems getting away from them... they would swim over top of you and stop. They would settle down on top of you, expecting to be cleaned. Strobes came in well here to light the beautiful white underbelly:)

22 minutes ago, ianmarsh said:

I will say that with the mantas, I sometimes had problems getting away from them... they would swim over top of you and stop. They would settle down on top of you, expecting to be cleaned. Strobes came in well here to light the beautiful white underbelly:)

If that winds up being the case, I feel ok with the YS-01 strobes, or my big blue lights. 

With the TG-6 you will be shooting at f2.8, this is 3-4 stops faster than wide angle shooters need with larger sensor cameras who need to shoot at f8-16.    You should have more than enough light from the YS_01 strobes.   Note that f8 on the TG-6 is a neutral density filter at f2.8 physical aperture, so for this sort of work you don't want or need to be at f8, unless the light is particularly bright and you need to reduce your shutter speed.

Shooters with full frame cameras shoot at f/8 or more to get more depth of field.

The Crop Factor on the TG-6 is 5.62. So, shooting at f/2.8 is the FF equivalent of f/16. That should yield all the depth of field you'd want, so definitely no reason to stop down. Keep it wide open, ISO low and crank up the shutter speed as needed, if it's too bright (which is unlikely).