How many lumens before the fish swim away?

[Pearlman]

Folks
I purchased a pair of 1000 lumens torches - a video 120° beam and a spot beam. I belatedly realized the torches have no intensity control.

Assuming I shoot most of my videos in the day, and the light beam is truly 1000 lumens, will it be too bright and disturbing for marine creatures so that they swim away from my gopro? On a bright sunny day versus cloudy overcast? On a night dive? At 20mtrs? 30?

Thanks for your educated insights into this.
P

Sent from Tablet, please excuse brevity and typos...

 

[LowDrag]

I found that if I use my DRIS 1000 lumen light on something I am shooting video of with my GoPro it washes out the subject. On my night dive cert I tried my DRIS 1K and my 200 lumen light and they seemed to both be about as bright in the dark but the 200 lumen light had a wider beam where the 1K had a tight beam. Hope this helps.

 

[drbill]

My Solas set at 500 lumens each will blind several species at night but I haven't noticed a substantial reaction during the day

 

[tursiops]

Depends on the fish. Many WILL swim away at night, given almost ANY brightness.

 

[victorzamora]

Have people played around with red lights for night-vision preservation? Has this helped or hindered seeing fish?

I've never done a night dive with a bright light, just old, crappy, cheap lights.....and I have seen some species completely run from even that much light.

During the day, lights help a smidge.....mostly returning reds to corals and fish.

 

[Steve_C]

On of the first colors that you loose with depth is red. Also there is a lot of red in the sponges and some coral. So in some areas a red light would help you see some stuff but it would look odd

 

[victorzamora]

I meant white lights for color correction. Red light would be for lower night vision damage.

 

[tursiops]

Red lights not only preserve your own night vision, many of the critters seem to not even see the red light.
For still photography it works fine: use the red light to frame and focus, then blast away with the strobe.
For video, not so much....red lights will look, well, red....

 

[victorzamora]

I can see that. I didn't see the "video" portion of that....I meant for yo'self.

 

[tbone1004]

lowdrag, huge difference between spots and spread beams in lights unfortunately, the 1k video head should be fine. I wouldn't turn the spot on unless you have to. The video patterns don't tend to spook creatures in caves that are operating in true pitch black, but if you get the hot spot from a primary near them, they dart off.