Taking Night Dive Photos

[bobf]

The light emitted by the focus light may be viewed as ambient light. Therefore to eliminate the hot spot of the focus light, just increase your shutter speed. As long as you don't choose a speed that is quicker than your sync speed, there are no down sides. At night, the last thing you're interested in capturing is ambient light anyways because aside from the aforementioned focus light, there is none. For point and shoot digicams try 1/250 sec.

BTW, On night dives I use a mini q 40 (4AA) with a home made red gel filter (Roscolux #027) inserted between the bulb and the inside glass. The gel filters are paper thin, cut to shape with a pair of scissors, and do not adversely affect the water tightness of the focus light. Roscolux is carried by many theatrical supply houses and at online photographic retailers.

Many night critters are not as skittish when a red light is aimed at them as they are when a bright white light is. My Oly c4040 has no problem picking up a focus lock when the red gel light is used to aid in focus. I commonly use shutter speeds of 1/250 sec at night with the Oly. Most p&s cameras will still sync at that speed (and much faster speeds).

hth,
b

 

[ABQdiver]

The light emitted by the focus light may be viewed as ambient light. Therefore to eliminate the hot spot of the focus light, just increase your shutter speed. As long as you don't choose a speed that is quicker than your sync speed, there are no down sides. At night, the last thing you're interested in capturing is ambient light anyways because aside from the aforementioned focus light, there is none. For point and shoot digicams try 1/250 sec.

BTW, On night dives I use a mini q 40 (4AA) with a home made red gel filter (Roscolux #027) inserted between the bulb and the inside glass. The gel filters are paper thin, cut to shape with a pair of scissors, and do not adversely affect the water tightness of the focus light. Roscolux is carried by many theatrical supply houses and at online photographic retailers.

Many night critters are not as skittish when a red light is aimed at them as they are when a bright white light is. My Oly c4040 has no problem picking up a focus lock when the red gel light is used to aid in focus. I commonly use shutter speeds of 1/250 sec at night with the Oly. Most p&s cameras will still sync at that speed (and much faster speeds).

hth,
b

Nice hints! thanks, I'll give those a shot next time out!!

 

[f3nikon]

Good points as usual Bob; the problem I get from using faster shutter speeds is like you said sync speed and when using wider aperture openings (during bracketing), the modeling light still bleeds through. Now we could decrease the intensity of the modeling light by adding a diffuser but end up with light that is too dim for the camera to accurately focus in the first place. So instead of trying to take the modelling light out of the picture why not "blend" in the light with the strobe's light, by reducing the hot spot and getting a wider beam. Also a wider, brighter modelling light beam will give you a better gage of how much backscatter is in the water, but does have its drawbacks.

From my experiences videotaping night dives, using 200-watt halogen lamps and plenty of gel batteries, yes blasting the reef with light, most of the creatures are asleep or in a half sleep anyway. The fish’s colors are not as vibrant as they are during the day, so I really don’t shoot too many fish at night except maybe a close-up of a parrot fish’s eyes or scales. My target subjects are corals that open up only at night and creatures that hunt only at night like some eels and mollusks.

Dive Safe

Al

 

[starpilottom]

I use a small Princton Tech LED light for night dives with camera. I hold it up against the stobe arm on my housing and it doesn't seem to produce any hot spots. It can be a problem with back scatter if there is alot of particulants or bloodworms in front of the lens so I turn it away when clicking off the pic. My Sony DSC V1 uses laser hologram to focus and turns it off for pic unless using infrarednight shot function so I'm mot sure if a small light will allow your camera to focus.

 

[ABQdiver]

I use a small Princton Tech LED light for night dives with camera. I hold it up against the stobe arm on my housing and it doesn't seem to produce any hot spots. It can be a problem with back scatter if there is alot of particulants or bloodworms in front of the lens so I turn it away when clicking off the pic. My Sony DSC V1 uses laser hologram to focus and turns it off for pic unless using infrarednight shot function so I'm mot sure if a small light will allow your camera to focus.

Nice thought!
What cause this problem was a big boo-boo on my part. We knew that there would be night diving and I packed my 10w HID can light. However, I did not disconnect the battery and it got turned on some time in the trip. I went to use it and the lens was melted. No other damage and since the lens has been replaced.

Anyway, with no primary, I zip tied my scout clone to the side of my strobe thinking that would put the light where I needed it. Wrong!! The clone, like the scout is under driven using three C batts versus the standard 4. Never thought it would give the hot spots that it did.

I like the idea of using the HID primary and just hold it so the cone of light was on the subject just not drowning it in light! Since the C-7070 uses the infared focus light it should work.......