Single strobe + filler light

[Hintermann]

I used to shoot with twin Ikelite AF35 strobes till my recent trip to Indonesia. Unfortunately, midway through the trip I failed to tighten the lug on the battery compartment completely on the right hand strobe while changing batteries. It started to flood as I jumped in but I did not notice and switched on the strobe, which resulted in a catastrophic short and destruction of the device beyond repair.

I was unable to find a rental replacement strobe but what I did manage was to borrow a 12-inch flexi arm from another diver and this snugly fitted into the YS mount on my strobe tray. I then attached my 1000-lumen Epoque video light to that arm and used it at 10% power to act as a filler from the right side while using just the left strobe. The results were quite good both at day and night and what's more, I did not need to mount the focus light on top of the housing for night UW photography.

As mentioned before, I aim to retire from diving in July 2016. I have 2 major dive trips with about 80 dives pending in the interim and instead of spending some £320 ($500 approx) on a new strobe, decided to get a flex arm for £35 and use the video light as a filler for a single strobe in the same manner as above. What do people think?

 

[Storker]

One thing to consider: Color temp. What's the color temperature of the video light and the strobe? If they differ significantly, you'll get weird results.

Otherwise, if you're able to balance the intensity of a strobe (high) with the intensity of the video light (lower), I don't see any other big issues.

 

[Hintermann]

One thing to consider: Color temp. What's the color temperature of the video light and the strobe? If they differ significantly, you'll get weird results.

Otherwise, if you're able to balance the intensity of a strobe (high) with the intensity of the video light (lower), I don't see any other big issues.

I checked. The Ikelite strobe has a colour temp of 5700K while the Epoque light is rated at 7000K and is wide-angle. I am setting the strobe at a sharp angle (to minimise backscatter) and the light at a slightly less acute angle on the other side. The results looked OK but in a few days I'll post them with a report and await comments.