Lights - How much power?

[KiiY]

Just a follow up on what Leni Riefenstahl used to do her video...

Tonight I was talking to a friend who used to do underwater video, but now does underwater still photography for a living, and he said he actually met and dove with Leni Riefenstahl once in the late 80's.

It was quite a while ago (so the time period rules out HID lights) and he recalls that her cameraman was using Betacam with two lights attached to the housing. He guessed that they were 250 watt bulbs and were running off a very large battery.

At any rate, it's not something I can even begin to consider for my own videos... but it was quite interesting to hear his story. He said she was an incredibly nice person and invited him to dive together with her team.

 

[peterbkk]

Hi again. After more reading I'm leaning towards using lights to get better color in my videos. But now I'm wondering how much you would consider as the "minimum" halogen wattage necessary for good color during daylight shooting. 50 watts? Dual 50 watt heads? 100 watts?

How can I get colors like that? In daylight, clear tropical water at about 20 to 30 meters down, how strong do lights need to be to get good subject illumination out to about 2 or 3 meters from the video camera?

Right now I'm leaning towards halogen because of cost and the fact that HID lights take a while before they come up to full power. Budget is actually the bigger factor since I'd still like to be able to afford some diving after getting new lights.

Light selection is a complex topic that all UW videographers go through. In the end, you make a choice and then learn to exploit the strengths of that choice and live with the weaknesses.

I chose HID because they are closer in color balance to sunlight. So, if you are shooting scenes with a lot of sunlight (tropical reef down to 80-100 feet) and want lights to bring out the nearby colors, the HID will be a better balance than Halogen. With HIDs you can even get away with using the UR filter and lights simultaneously. Halogen will be too red and look a bit strange in contrast with the sunlit areas in the background.

10W HIDs are powerful enough for most tropical scenes and a pair of them will give you enough light for most night diving situations.

You dont want to buy too much power, especially if, like me, you are a one-man video maker. Too much power will cause flare-outs and highlight any backscatter. A team can control more powerful lights by moving them further back and adding diffusers. But, as a one-man-band, you don't have that luxury.

There is the issue of HID lights coming up to power but I find that the power consumption efficiency is such that I can just leave them all through the dive and get two dives out of a set of batteries.

Regards
Peter

 

[Nocturnal Lights]

Hi Peter,

Thanks for the the input. I just want to add that we provide halogen bulbs in different color temperatures such as 4700k and 5500k. A lot of people buy HIDs not knowing that they have this option. And like you mentioned, there are situations where you want a really bright light and some situations where you can shoot with a 10w HID (close to our 20W overvolted halogens). Just my .02