Sola 1200 Help

[codybear]

I had just purchased a Sola 1200 and took it on it's first night dive. It worked as it said, it didn't disturbed anything. The problem was after the dive all the pictures where red even with two strobes firing. Can anybody help me out

 

[lightandmotion]

Hi Cody,

We are excited to hear about your new Photo 1200! Though sorry to hear that you had some unexpected results during it's maiden voyage.

Check the following before your next dive:
- Both strobes are actually firing off? Maybe worth double checking, as the output of the strobes should offset the red in your photos.
- Strobe positioning? Perhaps try to re-angle your strobes and adjust these toward your subject.

I hope that this helps!

Sincerely,
The L&M Team

 

[JahJahwarrior]

Cody, do you have a way to tell us what your ISO, aperture and shutter speed were?

Also, are you shooting pictures that require daylight such as wide angle photos angled up towards the surface during daylight?

The way strobes work is by firing so quickly, even a really fast shutter speed is plenty long enough for the light to get in to the sensor. In practice you’ll find that 1/125 to 1/250th of a second is the fastest you can get with some rigs, due to delays in the system firing the flash, but very modern cameras are making it so you can have some models where way faster speeds are possible.

And in that 1/125th of a second, the red light which appears very bright to your eyes, does not really output very much light compared to the flash. The flash outputs, lets say 10 watts per second, but in under 1/125th of a second, so it’s really like a very short burst of 1,250 watts of light. But the red light is measured in watts per hour, and there is not much of a fraction of an hour in that 1/125th of a second. So, while the shutter is open, a lot of white light from your flash should be getting to the sensor, while very little red light does. So you can affect the amount of red light that comes in by changing the shutter speed or aperture, but changing shutter speed won’t have an affect on the intensity of the strobes.

But I have had many times happen where I did use a slow enough shutter speed that some red light came in. The trick is to pick an aperture that lets a good amount of light in—for very dark areas where I want the most light in, I might use full power flash and a lower aperture to let more light in, but otherwise, I might only use ¼ power on the flash to let me have much faster recycle times, and a high aperture to get sharper photos, and then you change the shutter speed based on the amount of environmental light you want. So for wide angle reef shots, you might need 1/60th of a second, but for macro work, you can go up to the highest speed that doesn’t result in a black bar along the bottom of your shot, such as 1/125th of a second.

Of course, the best is to shoot in raw and edit in light room. You should be able to remove any little bit of red that is captured that way.

Post some of your shots, show off your handiwork! Solas are amazing huh?

 

[tursiops]

I'm guessing he was set on Auto (either shutter or aperture priority) and the camera actually exposed for the red light as well as getting the strobe light....and per post #2 maybe he wasn't even seeing the strobe lights.

Another possibility is that the camera was set for one of the "compensate for depth modes by inserting more red into the picture" and the red he saw is actually strobe light, reddened, not the Sola light.

 

[sharkbaitDAN]

I've had this happen with a photo 800 (red light is the same as the 1200), and I only shoot in manual.

I will second the notion that a slow shutter speed combined with an open aperture combined with the red light on high can lead to red in the photos. Based on what needs to occur, I've only experienced this when shooting wide-angle, in low vis, at night. When vis is good, I use higher strobe power, which lets me use faster shutter/smaller aperture with lower backscatter concerns.

All that being said, I rarely use the red light with wide angle, and dedicate the light to my macro port. Granted, I have three Solas, and I use a couple Sola 1200 video lights with my wide angle setup, instead of the photo light.

Shooting RAW will help, but if you end up with a cone of red in the photo it can be difficult/time consuming to edit it out.

 

[codybear]

All shot where made on a night dive.And I haven't looked at all the setting yet

 

[drbill]

Those red lights are the bain of my existence as a videographer. I've had them discolor a number of my video sequences when a still imager gets too close while I am filming with my Sola 1200s and 2000s. Of course the video shutter speed is much slower than 1/125.