Black backgrounds and macro lighting techniques for UW video?

Hello all,
I'm opening this thread to share tips on macro lighting / black background / low-key lighting tips specifically for UW video, ie, shooting moving images with continuous lighting.

There's plenty of info online on macro lighting and black background techniques for stills, and a lot, if not most of the info given there can be transferred to video.

However, one of the main difference is that from a let's say "orthodox" point of view, you can't really bump shutter speed for video (180° shutter "rule"), so you have to rely almost exclusively on closed aperture, light positioning and snooting (eventually exposure compensation settings if shooting in aperture priority mode rather than full manual), along with low ISO and shooting up whenever possible.

I've just started trying things out, and it seems like with video lights it's easier to underexpose the background with (snooted) light (s) positioned directly above the subject rather than edge lighting, from the sides inwards, which is probably to lack of shutter control for UW video, but would love more input from people who have already experimented with macro video lighting techniques.

It also seems like hotspots are less of issue in this type of macro lighting scenario, and that working with a non-video specific dive light can give interesting, snoot-like results, as long as it's not too powerful, and doesn't overexpose the subject.

UW video-specific info is rare, and even more so for UW macro video, and lighting techniques, including black backgrounds

However two UW videographers stand out for their use of this technique in my opinion: Dustin Adamson (Oceanshutter) and some shots Marcelo Ogata (Bugdreamer)

Some black-background UW video examples:

 https://youtu.be/zahhO-H3LSk

https://youtu.be/Z4QnNgoYPzw

https://youtu.be/QCT4dlfeIlA

https://youtu.be/n4FzRHiEL8E

https://youtu.be/DLK4cDVuNQM?t=325

Tutorial-wise, when it comes to UW video-specific info.

We have Mathias Lebo’s vid here:

https://youtu.be/GaxkpnChmZ4?t=260

One TG4/5 tutorial here

https://youtu.be/vSdREIx9WHo

And some commercial snoot light reviews like this one here:

https://youtu.be/p-y5Dfy6Il4?t=93

 As you can see, these are mostly examples of black backgrounds created by focused lighting from above rather than using edge lighting.


When it come to UW photography tutorials, we have a lot more to choose from:

Here's a little compilation of comprehensive black background how-tos for UW photography, with the caveat that strobe positioning seems to work a little differently with video, where you can't bump shutter speed.

https://youtu.be/Z4QnNgoYPzw

https://youtu.be/JfAOyNEYcJQ

https://youtu.be/tdIgCsVrs-U

https://youtu.be/KY2BAJtz2kQ

cheers!
ben

7 hours ago, bghazzal said:

However, one of the main difference is that from a let's say "orthodox" point of view, you can't really bump shutter speed for video (180° shutter "rule"), so you have to rely almost exclusively on closed aperture, light positioning and snooting (eventually exposure compensation settings if shooting in aperture priority mode rather than full manual), along with low ISO and shooting up whenever possible.

Actually, the 180-degree rule is strictly related to movement. If you have subjects that are motionless or moving very slowly, it makes virtually no sense.

So the shutter speed could be used to simulate the effect you get in photography but from my tests I've never been able to do that because I think the photographic effect is related to the use of strobes. 

The best way to achieve a dark/black background is through the use of very concentrated beams of light. This way, in addition to isolating the subject, you also get another advantage: avoiding illuminating the water between the lens and the subject. In macro even small invisible particles, when illuminated, look like large meteorites
You don't necessarily need a snoot, I have used underwater torch with a concentrated beam several times with excellent results. 

Good point Davide - higher shutter speed could be something to work on for slower subject like nudis, and I'm not even sure it would change much for cephalods or already staccato critters like shimps and other crustaceans...

I've only tired bumping shutters speed once on land with a motionless small toy figure, but couldn't really see much of difference in terms of background isolation effect either, so it might be a constant light vs strobes issue indeed.

I gave dark (-er) backgrounds a go a couple of days ago, with these small snoot attachments I have for the cheap Archon DV11-II lights I'm using, to which I added a small torch positionned above on the cold-shoe mount.
Results were not fully black but interesting, and it turns out Balinese waters at 10am on a sunny day were actually much darker than expected at f11 and 125 ISO.

I was mostly trying edge-lighting, with beams coming low from the sides, which doesn't really seem to work as well as the top-based light beams.
I couldn't do much on the second dive unfortunately, as full-moon currents had really picked up and made life miserable for these kind of tests and spotting, but I'll focus on top-down beams on the next tries.
 

If the subject is stationary you can safely try combinations like 1/25 @25p or 1/200 @25p nothing really changes except the exposure.

Regarding the position of the lights (macro and WA). My shots are largely taken in depth where the light from my lamps is predominant.
The plasticity and trdimensionality of an image is largely given by the shadows. the shadows are our friends! Yet I see so many people who insist on lighting their subjects with two headlights on either side at full power. We only get the effect of flattening the image. The lights should always be placed at the top. When I place them on the side, I always keep one at half power to create shadows.
That's why the snoot effect from above is so beautiful.

Years ago I practiced macro with a diving flashlight on a day when sea conditions were prohibitive. Just finished a storm, visibility of one meter with lots of suspension and a strong swell up to 30 meters. I was in full sun but by illuminating only the subject I was able to give snoot effect.

These are throw-away images, but just to give an idea.

I've also had some success and some failure with attaining black backgrounds for macro video. A few thoughts:

• Davide is entirely correct on the flexibility in shutter angle for most underwater macro scenarios. In the attached frame grab I believe I ended up shooting a 90 degree shutter angle to properly expose, and imo you do have a good amount of leeway for these minimally-moving subjects to adjust the shutter angle.
• If using a closed aperture and fast shutter speed to "black-out" the background, clearly you need a large amount of light hitting your subject. I've had the best results when using the Divepro MP30 (as in the frame grab), and even the Backscatter MW4300 with OS-1 snoot isn't always able to sufficiently overpower bright waters.
• You can sometimes darken the background more in post with video editing software. In situations with only one artificial light source, the background may be easy to isolate as the "blue" part of the frame. In DaVinci, I've sometimes been able to get away with lowering the luminance and saturation of the blues to help turn a dark blue background into a near-black one. However, this is situation-dependent and can also get strange results depending on how sharp the edge of your light beam is.

2 hours ago, t.tm.m said:

You can sometimes darken the background more in post with video editing software. In situations with only one artificial light source, the background may be easy to isolate as the "blue" part of the frame. In DaVinci, I've sometimes been able to get away with lowering the luminance and saturation of the blues to help turn a dark blue background into

Yes, moreover Resolve masks make miracles!

Beautiful frame grab. It seems a photo.

Great - I'll defintely be experimenting with higher shutter speeds and top lighting.

Totally with you on the shadows - an issue I'm having at the moment is the size of some of the critters in these parts.

I just got a +1.75 half-moon mask for macro but it doesn't really help much. It's very difficult to make out the details in order to position the camera and lights.
My wife has way better eyes and can make out the rhinophores, but not much else on some of the sub grain of rice nudis and shrimps. I ended shooting at the wrong angle / wrong side of the twig a few times already...

I just remembered I can zoom-in while in focus assist mode, so this is my cunning plan to try to get a better idea of what I'm shooting, which should hopefully help with composition / positioning...

I don't use Resolve (macbook air is not powerful enough to get fluid playback unfortunately, but FCPX works well), but you can do similar with  Lumetri color panel in Final Cut - I usually go for hue vs luma and hue vs sat, which also helps soften the green/cyan non-lit backgrounds.

Black water is generated by water
Which means the subject needs to be standing out of the bottom
This is obviously an issue with most macro subjects that sit on something
You can take a backdrop with you making sure you don’t damage the bottom or simply get an old pair of sola spot flood
As your lights are further away even a narrow beam expands so you need to be on top of things


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I'd heard about the backdrop trick in one of the talks linked in the original post still tutorials - this is not something I'm interested in working with personally, as there's already a lot you can do with lighting, positioning and exposure.

I've trying things out on land (bumping shutter speed to 600/800 is enough to block out Balinese sunlight on land at 3pm), it's fun, almost like theater stage lighting...
 

Well, last few days have been windy, with surge strong enough to make shooting a real challenge, especially small (less than 2mm) critters whose leafy world is easily affected by water movement like Shaun the Sheep nudis...
Not to mention current moving sand everywhere like tornados....

These nudi shots were taken over 2 morning dives at Melasti Amed, a fun local muck site.

For low-key, dark background, it turns out that at 9/10am, at 10m or less in strong tropical Balinese sunlight, bumping the shutter to 125 to 200 max is usually enough to block out the sunlight at f/11, 125 ISO on the LX10.

These cute nudis are easy to find here, and most are so small that the pair snooted Archon 700 lumen DV-11 II works ok.
I'm positionning them above the subject now, and also tried supplementing with a 250 lumen Scubapro nova dive torch beam

Otherwise gear is still a Lumix LX10 mounted on my homemade quadripod, with an INON UCL-165 (+6 diopter) closeup lens, this time combined with a Backscatter Macromate mini (+10 ? ) diopter designed for GoPro cameras, as I don't currently own a stronger diopter.
The Macromate is a 55mm wet lens, whereas the Inon is 67mm.
It is what is is, but works to some extent, with a focusing distance of about 2.5cm from the subject.

I just hope it will be a little less surgy in the near future, as this really does make focusing and light placement difficult...

cheers
b

25 minutes ago, bghazzal said:

These cute nudis are easy to find here, and most are so small that the pair snooted Archon 700 lumen DV-11 II works ok.

That type of snoot (without a Fresnel lens) loses most of the light. A snoot with an integrated lens changes everything.

10 hours ago, Davide DB said:

That type of snoot (without a Fresnel lens) loses most of the light. A snoot with an integrated lens changes everything.

I didn't even know snoots with integrated lenses existed!
Looked into it and yes, optical snoots look promising.

But I'll have make do with this at the moment - difficult to source in Indonesia, and if was to buy anything for these macro diddles it would be a single powerful diopter I think.
I'm also a big fan of your disclaimer Davide

14 hours ago, bghazzal said:

I didn't even know snoots with integrated lenses existed!
Looked into it and yes, optical snoots look promising.

Our fellow @Aquatic Images made a review of one of these lights time ago:

10 hours ago, Davide DB said:

Our fellow @Aquatic Images made a review of one of these lights time ago:

 

Thanks - I looked into this very model yesterday, as I was curious, but they don't seem to sell it In Indonesia.
They do  have distributors listed, so I'll get in touch.

The only thing I can find easily is the backscatter system or some weefine lights, or some X-Adventurer light with an optical snoot lens

https://www.divesea.co.id/search?type=product&q=snoot

https://www.tokopedia.com/search?st=product&q=snoot focus&srp_component_id=02.01.00.00&srp_page_id=&srp_page_title=&navsource=

Second-hand is pretty much a no-go as well, both snoot or diopters....

I think you can definitely find good alternatives.

I linked you to that one because I remembered the review. I wouldn't buy DivePro products (formerly Jaunt) even at gunpoint  I have had some of their lamps and support from the parent company, ZERO.

It is also true that these small lamps are very cheap so the risk is low.

However in general the snoot with the lens is a whole different story. If done well it can concentrate most of the light.

For a single powerful diopter, I guess your choice, with it's  limitations, would be CMC-1 but I don't know it's focusing distance on LX10.

14 minutes ago, Davide DB said:

For a single powerful diopter, I guess your choice, with it's  limitations, would be CMC-1 but I don't know it's focusing distance on LX10.

The data for Nauticam's diopters is in the port chart here:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1HM8Jlvdbb8MLCLDIYeVSV2tBnZQv-I6f/view

At closest focus the sensor covers 34 x 22.7mm and working distance is 48-73mm.  That is close to equivalent to life size on a full frame camera for magnification (but with less working distance).  The CMC-2 gives a little less magnification but a wider working distance range of 76-128mm.  The high magnification is nice but many creatures won't let you get that close.  Other diopters like the INON UCL67 will be in the same ball park.

Thanks Chris

That critters seems to be very small. I have the CMC-2 on M43 and it wouldn't get that magnification but I hate CMC-1 for it's narrow focus range 

Same old story

Thanks - I did manage to find an alternative snoot video light with a 5° beam angle, and supposedly 100.000 lux at 100mm offered  at a very good price so got that as I'm in the south for a couple of days before going back up north to macro -land.

Backscatter's light + snoot combo was surely the best choice but out of my range - otherwise the Inon LF800-N was warmly recommended over the Weefine optical snoots (and Inon lights are really well made), but it's no longer available.

Alternatives available here were other Chinese rebrands like Weefine, X-Adventurer, Nitescuba - but there was a nice half-price offer on the Scubalamp MS10 I got today - I'll test in in a few days - it's definitely a cheap light but has a tight (square...) beam, more powerful than what I currently have, so should be interesting.
Looks ok on land, and I'm looking forward to playing around with it.

For the diopters, it would be great to be able to test things out, see what works best.  A pro photographer living in the area was offering to lend me a strong diopter but he's off in the Philippines at the moment.

The Inon UCL-165M67 +6 works great with the LX10 for medium to large size critters like a harlequin shrimp and nudis down to around 1cm, but a lot of critters like these Costasiella nudis are in the 1 to  2mm range, so closer to supermacro.

First dives in the area I only had the UCL-165M67 +6, but I couldn't really get close enough / have enough magnification for those really tiny critters.
For that, I'm making do with the Macromate mini (supposed to be a +15  according to Backscater, not sure how realistic that is) with the Inon on top, and can focus at roughly 2.5 cm (so 25 mm) from the small subjects (I have a stick with inch graduations, and focus range was roughly 1 inch) - luckily they're not really shy....

I'm hoping have a stronger beam of light will help the camera focus better in these scenarios, as it's a little fidgetty. Image quality is what it is, but at least it's something to work with for now.

Did one dive with the Scubalamp MS10 snoot torch yesterday, and pretty happy with it so far.

Definitely does make a difference and is definitely powerful enough for supermacro video (had to dim to avoid clipping at times)
It does make focusing easier and allowed me to bump up the shutter to 1/250 to fully isolate the subject.

Here are some captures, at roughly midday on a tropical sunny day.

Continuing the tests tomorrow...

As a follow-up, I've been diving with the Scubalamp MS-10 snoot video light for the past few days, trying out low-key lighting / dark backgrounds.  It's been interesting, especially for supermacro subjects, but trickier for anything bigger than 1 cm (a standard dive torch might work better for that)

The MS-10 snoot light works rather well, and the difference the non-snoot lights used in the clip above is appreciable, especially for smaller subjects, like for this surprisingly cooperative juvenile harlequin shrimp the wife spotted in Tulamben the other day.

Subject size is roughly 5 mm, so quite small, and the light was enough for low-key shots at f/11 (this was shot at midday).
One of the high shutter speed shots had quite a lot of banding, but this might have been due to trying out a second light with the snoot, which I did at some point.

Otherwise yes, of course, it would have been nice to have a better closeup lens than the Inon UCL-165 stacked on Backscatter's Macromate mini macro lens for GoPros, but hey, it is what it is!
 

I'm currently working on putting together a reel of various other low-key / black backround shots filmed with this setup.
 

cheers
b