To light or not to light? (Underwater)

[Rodrigo Violante]

I been recently fighting into buying lights or do all natural light, here are my thoughts and I will love your opinion.

- Underwater lights are amazing when shooting Macro since it helps to use high aperture.
- Shooting big animals, like sharks, whales you will never be able to light it.
- Fish gives reflection of light back and causes to look not natural.
- I feel underwater life looks fake on big fish at least and not going macro.
- With Light the back scatter is too much vs not using it.

I recently shot this video of course without light but I feel if I had use light the results will have been worst, I have been trying to find things online but there is no discussion about this kind of things.

 

[Neil Abeynayake]

I been recently fighting into buying lights or do all natural light, here are my thoughts and I will love your opinion.

- Underwater lights are amazing when shooting Macro since it helps to use high aperture.
- Shooting big animals, like sharks, whales you will never be able to light it.
- Fish gives reflection of light back and causes to look not natural.
- I feel underwater life looks fake on big fish at least and not going macro.
- With Light the back scatter is too much vs not using it.

I recently shot this video of course without light but I feel if I had use light the results will have been worst, I have been trying to find things online but there is no discussion about this kind of things.

It may not be a bad idea to invest on a higher quality u/w lighting package anyways. You'll use them at one time or the other and at certain depths, night dives etc. One good thing is that you could turn them off if you feel they are intrusive. I'd rather have them than not having lights if and when you really need to get that dream shot/capture.

About the back scatter; it depends on conditions as you know. More particulates in the dive site, you'll have issues with unnecessary reflections.

Here is something not directly related to your post. I thought it might be interesting. I read somewhere, there is a father and son team of marine biologists based in the west coast of US. Every year they go on exploratory deep technical diving in the Southern Pacific outer Islands. We are talking over 500' depths with mix gas deep tech stuff here. And the article stated they find one or two new marine species or life forms on each dive. For some, this might be too extreme. However at those depths, lights are a must.