Amphibico Light question

[Crimson Ghost]

I use an Amphibico housing for my Sony HD video - I have used it for a little over a year now and enjoy it. Last year I took it on a night dive and strapped my flashlight to it - the videa was kind of cool and we all enjoyed it. I have ordered a light for it (never realized that cost a grand !! but I still ordered it).

Do you use the light during the day? or is it only for night and 100 + feet ?

Also, the red filter the housing came with - when do you use that? Is that for shallow or deep filming?

 

[Crimson Ghost]

I might have found my answer. The more light the better - so use it 100% of the time. The 10W amphibico light is good for 12 feet so a 6 foot max underwater distance. The red filter I will just not use - when I used it in the past it turned everything pinkish red. I thought it owuld permit us to see red again, but it turned everything red. But since I will bring my own MH light I should film the color without the filter. Is that right ?

 

[balls]

My initial setup was two lights (one Amphibico 10W HID, and one Brightstar 24W HID). I also rarely get deeper than 60 feet. My housing has both the flip-down red filter and the ability to do manual white balance (WB).

Okay, so given that, I was wrestling with "when to WB", "when to use filter", and "when to use lights". And what combinations of the above would work and with what limitations.

First, lets talk WB. From all that I've read I just pointed the camera at the sand and pressed the WB button. Works great. Colors are excellent. You just need to do this adjustment if you change your depth in the water column by more than 15 feet or so. Also learned from reading here that if you do the WB, do not use the filter. I've tried flipping the filter down and then doing the WB through the filter. Seemed to look okay. Not enough data to make it a procedure though. Also, if you are say at 60 feet, WB for that depth so the colors are warmer and then turn on your lights, everything illuminated by the lights gets REAL RED!!!! Okay, so I could turn the lights on and do a WB (less than six feet away from the sand for example). You can see this could get really messy.

The filter. Right now, it's basically my backup plan if the WB doesn't work.

Lights. I've resigned myself to shooting with natural light and the WB and not even bring the lights. I'm trying to stay in the 20 - 40 foot depth range to keep enough available light present. Lights would be great for macro shots (I don't do them because my port is a 120 degree wide angle port). I'm assuming that lights would be great if you turn them on and leave them on and don't alter the WB??? Could some one with more experience throw me a bone on this?

 

[ronscuba]

I'm not an expert, this is just what I do, I'm sure others have their own method.

All my diving is in clear tropical water, I use manual white balance whenever depth changes more than 15 feet or lighting conditions change.

Macro, closeup or night: lights, no filter, MWB set w/o filter and lights on
Standard and wide angle: filter, no lights, MWB set w/ filter in place and lights off


This is my standard procedure. Early morning or late afternoon, is tricky and I play around until things look "right". Sometimes that includes lights w/ filter.

 

[diversteve]

Also, the red filter the housing came with - when do you use that? Is that for shallow or deep filming?

The standard filter in an EVO is the UR/Pro Blue Water filter. I use mine from about 20-80' (+/-) in bright blue clear water. Below that I generally flip it up as I'm more concerned with light level falloff past that. But I don't have lights.

If you're filming in the greener NE, my guess would be either change to their Green filter or just flip it up and use your light.

Good advice from Balls, and ronscuba however an EVO doesn't have a MWB option. Unless you have an HVR-A1U, then you can buy an optional mechanical button that hits the assign button.

 

[Crimson Ghost]

Thanks ! I am using a Sony HDR-HC7 and I am not sure how to set the white balance on it (somthing I should learn I guess) I can set the white balance on my camera (XTI) so I suppsoe I can figure it out on the video.

I guess my first step will be to try the new light and see how the color is. I will be in hawaii in a couple of weeks and will have accessto our web site -- I'll post if I need assistance. This trip I have decided to leave my DC500 at home and only use the Video (which can take pictures as well as video, and they are nicer than the DC500 - plus its less to carry)

 

[Crimson Ghost]

Here is the light I purchased:

Amphibico | Discovery 10w HID Light | VLDL0010 | B&H Photo Video

When I am not filming but want to take a picture does this work as a strobe or do you just turn it on when taking pictures ?

 

[diversteve]

Thanks ! I am using a Sony HDR-HC7 and I am not sure how to set the white balance on it (somthing I should learn I guess)

You can't, the Amphibico EVO doesn't have a MWB option for the HC7.

What you might try doing is zooming in on something white - a slate, the sand bottom in Hawaii, etc. and turning the camera off then back on. It should set an AWB point by doing that but it's also inconsistent - I tried it one trip and didn't see any better results. For Hawaii in bright daylight conditions, I'd just use the red filter unless you go deep or into some of the overhead areas.

Here is the light I purchased:

Amphibico | Discovery 10w HID Light | VLDL0010 | B&H Photo Video

When I am not filming but want to take a picture does this work as a strobe or do you just turn it on when taking pictures ?

It's a video light so to have it work for pictures it will need to be on. It's also an HID light so you won't be able to quickly turn it off then on again as there's a Shutdown/ballast reset time of 13 seconds. Plus a re-start time of 5 seconds more.

10 watt Discovery Bulb

Total lumens (initial) : 500
Correlated color temperature : 7000°K
Rated median life @ 1 hour ON / 15 minutes OFF : 1000 Hours
Warm-up time to 90% of rated output : 10 seconds
Start-up time to 90% of rated output: 5 seconds

10 watt Discovery Ballast

Input voltage @ 10 watts: 14.1 - 14.5
Shut down time : 3 seconds
Ballast reset time after shutdown : 10 seconds

In bright conditions like Hawaii, I can't see it being of much use when taking pictures during the day. Unless you're trying to light something up under a ledge or inside a lava tube. Or the Cathedrals at Lanai, that light would do a nice job of lighting up the Squirrelfish in the shadows in Cathedral 1.

 

[Crimson Ghost]

Hi Steve,

Thank you, I appreciate the feed back. We will be on Oahu, and planning to visit Kauai, Molokai, Lanai & Maui. I'll pretty much just turn it on and leave it on for the dive, we generally like to dive the lave tubes in hawaii and its kind of dark. I'll let you know how I make out - thanks again !

 

[bdombrowski]

I've been using an HC7 for about 14 months underwater in my USVH housing. I bought the USVH housing with a PDX10 in 2003, and luckily was able to re-use the housing with the HC7. The HC7 doesn't have manual white balance control available via LANC, so the USVH housing can't do the manual white balance underwater. To get around this, I do the following: While top-side fix the HC7 white balance to *outdoor* setting for sunlight. The white balance is now locked to the outdoor setting while diving. Then, instead of manually setting white balance during the dive, I do this: Before or immediately after shooting a scene, I shoot a few seconds of a calibrated slate with white, black, and 18% gray bars, (or use the pricey amphibico color slate to do the same.) This gives me a reference clip on tape right before I shoot a scene in identical lighting conditions. Be sure to shoot the reference using near the same lens to subject distance for the most accuracy. Also, if you're using lights, they better be on when shooting the reference slate, sames goes for the UR pro filter. When I bring my footage into NLE, I use the reference slate black, white, and gray in conjuction with the 3-way color corrector in Premiere Pro 2 (same goes for FCP if you're handicaped and need a Mac.) The footage white balances perfectly. You MUST fix the white balance and NOT use auto-white balance to do this, cause Sony's auto-white balance is dynamic and thus changes all the time and is horrible for underwater use on the HC7. Also, HC7 uses CMOS sensors and if you really want HD resolution and color out of the noise floor, you need to bring your own light for the foreground during daylight dives deeper than 20ft . To balance my lighting with sunlight, I use dual 50W 3600K halogens with CineFilter 3/4 CTB filters on them to bring the color temp closer to sunlight at the trade-off a losing about 1.3 stop of light. It works great and the same filter gels have lasted about 200 dives so far.