Video Light Advice

Hey All, 

I am hoping I can find some advice for choosing appropriate video lights from some experienced forum users. I am an experienced stills shooter and have some prize money from a photo contest, which I  have decided to use for video lights as I am happy with my still equipment. The prize money goes towards gear from SUPE / Scubalamp products. 

I intend to use the video lights for both GoPro and DSLR / Mirrorless purposes. I will mostly use them shallow <10m 30 feet; but will likely want to use them deeper at times and white balance accordingly. I'm trying to choose between 3 options at the moment. 

1) Go with inexpensive 5000 lumen lights x2 that are not compatible with blue filters, but will not require much outlay of cash beyond the prize. 

2) Go for 2x7500 lumen lights and blue filters that will require I outlay a fair bit of cash beyond the prize. 

3) Go for 1x12000 lumen light and blue filter, which will require a modest outlay of cash. 

I suppose my big question is whether one powerful light or 2 more modest lights will be better in the short run... 

Thanks for any input.

6 minutes ago, BTurffs said:

3) Go for 1x12000 lumen light and blue filter, which will require a modest outlay of cash.

Go for the most powerful light you can get.

In shallow water you need a lot of power to overpower sun light and a blue filter will steal a stop or two at best.

I don't know much about video but have always been intrigued by the amount of light actually needed. What is "powerful" ? 12000 lumen? 15000? More??

For the average GoPro-er, just how much light makes sense? 

If you think about it, actually the opposite would be true. Here on WP we read countless times that smaller sensors need more light and that full frame blah blah blah...

It seems that for gopros the rule does not apply and in this case the statement is to be interpreted as: cheap camera = cheap lights.

I am a Mediterranean man and know nothing about tropical. But just calculate that here in the summer at 6 meters, 10000 lumens are nowhere near enough to counteract the sunlight at 1,5 meter.

Conversely in the videos I posted lately at 70 meters the two Keldan 9000 lumens are perfect with the WWL medium wide and the camera at ISO 800 F5.6

3 hours ago, Davide DB said:

Go for the most powerful light you can get.

In shallow water you need a lot of power to overpower sun light and a blue filter will steal a stop or two at best.

Thank you for the input. I've definitely heard that power is the consensus and understand how that applies even more shallow depths. The one other question that brings up for me, though is beam coverage. I'm primarily a wide angle shooter and wonder if I will have trouble adequately lighting a wide angle seen with a single light. 

No way to light a WA scene with one light.

While all manufacturers speaks about Lumens, this is not the best unit for our purpose.

Lumens tells what the total amount of light emitted from a flashlight or headlamp. You can roughly say that the more Lumens the brighter the light but it doesn't take in account the enlighted area. So, imagine you have a fish enlighted by two lamps with same 10000 Lumens: one classic sphere which emits 360° and a flashlight with a 10° beam. You will quickly discover that with the sphere you will not get enough light. 

So we have Lux that are Lumens in a given area. One lux is equal to one lumen per square meter. It enables us to measure the total “amount” of visible light present and the intensity of the illumination on a surface.

This is the reason because 1000 Lumens are enough for a macro light with a concentrated beam.

I would suggest if you are on a budget to forego the blue filters, they seem rather specialised to my mind and require you to use a much more powerful light.  You can take perfectly good video without them, you just need to have more care to not have subjects cross the frame too close and they appear quite red.  The blue filters convert the lights to local UW colour temperature so they act as fill lights.

To compare brightness the example I have seen is the test published on here some time back where they showed a 14000 lumen gates light was 6 stops dimmer than a YS-D2 strobe in power.

As for smaller sensors needing less light that is an it depends answer.  For video light to be effective it has to supply enough light to overpower the sunlight, at least enough so that you can colour balance properly, so if you have a fast f2.8 go-pro it lets in more video and more ambient light. When the sunlight is less powerful at depth the fast lens lets in more light and can in some circumstances allow you to get away with dimmer lights.  It is also an advantage for the go -pro using a red filter .

I'm with Chris. Leave blue filters at the shop!

The shallower you are, the more light you need. This applies regardless of the camera. 

But to put it in perspective, you should be able to get acceptable results from 0-10 meters depth without video lights -- just use WB and/or red filters.

Where you really want to bring lights into the picture is when shooting below 10 meters. And here you'll have to outcompete the output of the sun. In the 10-20 meter range in clear waters (tropical or meditteranean) you'll need at minimum 2x 15k lumen lights with a 90 degree beam. Note that the SUPE lights have a 120 degree beam, which cuts the effective lux in half. So.. bad. Generally, SUPE lights would not be my first choice for that reason.

Once you get below 20 meters, sunlight is dimmer, and you may be able to get away with 12k lumen lights, especially in overcast conditions or on early morning / late afternoon dives.

Below 30 meters light requirements get lower, as David already noted. Of course, not many of us are filming regularly below 30 meters...

Beam angle is an important factor. With the same lumen output, a 90 degree beam angle will give you roughly 2x the same amount of light falling on the area of interest as a 120 degree beam. For coverage purposes, 2x 90 degree lights will give you full coverage for any lens less than 130 degrees field of view -- in other words, enough for a gopro, and enough for any rectilinear lenses or a WACP/WWL type wet lens. The only thing you'll need a wider beam for is a fisheye. But again, most people wouldn't recommend filming video with a fisheye lens..

So all in all.. go with 2 90 degree 15k lumen lights as a starting point. If you want to use blue filters effectively.. double that. So either 4 lights, or 2 lights with ~30k lumen output.

9 hours ago, dreifish said:

Beam angle is an important factor. With the same lumen output, a 90 degree beam angle will give you roughly 2x the same amount of light falling on the area of interest as a 120 degree beam. For coverage purposes, 2x 90 degree lights will give you full coverage for any lens less than 130 degrees field of view -- in other words, enough for a gopro, and enough for any rectilinear lenses or a WACP/WWL type wet lens. The only thing you'll need a wider beam for is a fisheye. But again, most people wouldn't recommend filming video with a fisheye lens..

This is really a good point!

Usually manufacturers highlight 120 degrees as a merit. It is actually as Andrei writes. Usually the 120 degrees is the result of not having a good reflector and thus saving a lot of money on the design.

Thanks, guys. That’s really useful info and a great guide

I’ve pinned it

Thanks all for the responses! This is exactly the type of discussion / advice I had hoped to receive and is quite helpful. As mentioned above, I was venturing down this road due to the present opportunity, without intending to invest too much personal cash. Having thought through the above advice, I'm wondering one last thing: 

How about shooting in shallow, but low light situations. I really enjoy freshwater, and will shoot stills during day in fully shaded areas. In these situations I can balance ambient light rays with my strobes on low power. Would "lower" power, ie 5-10k video lights work in this circumstance? 

It ShouldWork™

Jokes apart, It is difficult to give a precise answer based on your description.
The darker it is, the more effect the lights have.
10K Lumens is not small in absolute terms. I have two 9K Lumens keldans and work perfectly with them always keeping in mind the above limitations.
What camera and lens do you use for video? GoPro only?
Mixing ambient and artificial light I think it is very difficult to get consistent white balance. But here we get into another endless topic

Any recommendations for medium sized critters at close-range?

I'm happy with ambient + filters for wide angle, and lights I have for closeup / macro, but recently made friends with a mimic octopus that I would like to light up correctly - the 2x 1000 lm lights I have are just too weak for medium range.

I just spent two dives stalking this little guy today, and was close (camera about 30cm from its hole when it was stationnary, 50cm when swimming around and hunting), tried different light positions (they're on arms in front of the camera) but just not enough power...

Would a good single 4000 to 5000 lm work in these kind of situations or should I just filter it (it's in the shallows, 15m to 7m....)

Beyond budget concerns, light options would be limited to these in these parts:  https://www.divesea.co.id/search?type=product&q=video+lights

In Italy we have the saying "the more you spend, the less you spend," which more or less corresponds to "you get what you pay for."

Two good lights last for years, so I would not take something that barely meets my current requirements.

BigBlue lamps are good lights. I see a lot of them around and have seen several used ones for sale on FB.

I have also seen some nice alternative lamps on sale here on WP.

Is your octopus friend very shallow in full sunlight?

10 hours ago, Davide DB said:

In Italy we have the saying "the more you spend, the less you spend," which more or less corresponds to "you get what you pay for."

Two good lights last for years, so I would not take something that barely meets my current requirements.

BigBlue lamps are good lights. I see a lot of them around and have seen several used ones for sale on FB.

I have also seen some nice alternative lamps on sale here on WP.

Is your octopus friend very shallow in full sunlight?

Thanks - luggage / usage is also an issue.
Not sure if I'll be using this light / these lights a lot, and already at 80kg of luggage for 2 (plus around 20kg of carryon), so adding two heavy lights is a big hassle when you don't have a home base.

Basically I'm happy with closeup and supermacro, ambient for wide angle ( I don't plan on using them for wide angle) but looking for something to light up a small scene in front of me (i'm thinking 50cmx50cm, at a 1m distance or less), so I'm wondering if this could be acheived with something like backscatter's 4200 macro wide, or a similar bigblue light.

Currently being in Indonesia, I only have access to what's on the site above.

Anything imported will have crazy tax duties (plus the risk of getting lost along the way), so I won't risk it.

There's 2 lights for sale on marketplace, one is actually where I'm a "12,000 lumen" Scubalamp at roughly 200 euros, but autonomy is supposed to be really bad as is, and the seller is tellig me it has less than 30 minutes autonomy at full power.... I spent over an hour with my cephalopod buddy yesterday just on the first dive....



My mimic-octopus buddy is between 15m and 7m (hole seems to always be at around 15, was for the 5 dives I saw him so far), on a black sandy slope, so not in direct sunlight.

Here are some raw, non white-balanced captures from yesterday (since I was using lights, I was on AWB, which might not have been the best choice given how weak the lights are...) - I'm basically in ambient light

Top one is on the plateau at 7m, and bottom one on the slope a 15m - I also did get some shots with a filter and manual WB the other day (not my keldan filter sheet, as I stick it on the lens inside the housing - instead I used an old 55mm UR-Pro Cyan I was using on the GoPro) - it was ok, but for a small guy like this I thing I'd like it to pop a bit.

Yesterday I tried getting the lights closer, and tried various positions while my pal was just sitting in its hole, but they're just too weak.

11 minutes ago, bghazzal said:

Thanks - loggage / usage is also an issue.
Not sure if I'll be using this light / these lights a lot, and already at 80kg of luggage for 2 (plus around 20kg of carryon), so adding two heavy lights is a big hassle when you don't have a home base.

Basically I'm happy with closeup and supermacro, ambient for wide angle ( I don't plan on using them for wide angle) but looking for something to light up a small scene in front of me (i'm thinking 50cmx50cm, at a 1m distance or less), so I'm wondering if this could be acheived with something like backscatter's 4200 macro wide, or a similar bigblue light.

Currently being in Indonesia, I only have access to what's on the site above. Anything imported will have crazy tax duties, so I won't risk it.

 

 

I would suggest first trying a custom white balance, I had a quick look at your first image and even from a screen shot it somewhat correctable, which suggests it might improve things with your current lights.  The issue of battery life for the new lights could always be dealt with by only turning them on when filming perhaps and they may even be bright enough at half power which also extends battery life. 

If you can try the lights you are suggesting you could do a rough check comparing the metered exposure reading on the same object from a common distance with the new and existing lights.  You could then  tell how much brighter they actually are.  Comparing lumens between different light is a challenge as some are a little exaggerated and also only directly comparable if the beam angle is the same.

8 hours ago, ChrisRoss said:

I would suggest first trying a custom white balance, I had a quick look at your first image and even from a screen shot it somewhat correctable, which suggests it might improve things with your current lights.  The issue of battery life for the new lights could always be dealt with by only turning them on when filming perhaps and they may even be bright enough at half power which also extends battery life. 

If you can try the lights you are suggesting you could do a rough check comparing the metered exposure reading on the same object from a common distance with the new and existing lights.  You could then  tell how much brighter they actually are.  Comparing lumens between different light is a challenge as some are a little exaggerated and also only directly comparable if the beam angle is the same.

Thanks Chris - yeah, I should have tried manual white balance - underwater it looked like the lights where having more of an effect than they do in the resulting footage... Also looking back at previous footage, it seemed like it worked better when I had the two lights bundled togeter than closer to the subject, but on the sides.

i took a quick look in post, and by rebalancing the WB, I can get an ambient light look, but it would have been better with a fllter.
The first image is AWB no filter, with the two 1000 lm lights, rebalanced in post.
the second is shot a few days earlier, ambient light, manual white balance with a UR-Pro Cyan filter

Same area / depth, I prefer the second one when it comes to that ambient light look... More accurate whites and colour balance in general - but then again, for the first one, I didn't WB underwater, which would have been better given how much ambient light was there...

Ah well... Learning a lot each dive.
I'll be out of the water for the next three weeks (family visit...) but will try that next run. Hopefully the little guy will hang around in the area...

Returning to video lights to avoid hijacking this thread further, real good idea for the exposure reading test - I could possibly do the test on the light that's on marketplace since it's local (I've read that the SUPE Scubalamps have a minimum 20% less than stated, so it's probably 8000 lumen or so for a 120° beam, which isn't great for reasons mentioned above) - others will be more difficult since there's no physical retailers in Denpasar.

Otherwise these two Big Blue models look interesting:

https://www.divesea.co.id/products/bigblue-cb7200p-photo-video-light?_pos=2&_sid=9670907f8&_ss=r
https://www.divesea.co.id/products/bigblue-vl4600p?_pos=3&_sid=9670907f8&_ss=r&variant=39829275672657

Not sure if it would make more sense to get an on-paper-more-powerful cheap secondhand Supe or a new, but weaker BigBlue lamp like these two - Bigblue sounds better, but not sure how much power is needed to overcome ambient light in this kind of medium-range situation, if it's even possible without going for 2x 15K lights (in which case I would stick to ambient light + filters, as I do when shooting wide...)

 

8 hours ago, bghazzal said:

the seller is tellig me it has less than 30 minutes autonomy at full power.

Humm, probably a dead battery. If the price is good you can just replace the battery pack. 

Here in Italy it's easy to assemble a new pack.

Otherwise this seems a good compromise for your depicted scenario.

https://www.divesea.co.id/products/bigblue-cb7200p-photo-video-light?_pos=2&_sid=546127465&_ss=r

P.S.

Your wb corrected frames seems good to me.

Edit: you suggested the same light. I would prefer the COB version.