While travelling over the past year, my partner Lisa and I took a lot of GoPro video, and used it to make professional-looking underwater videos. As an underwater photographer, I am always thinking about lighting – more importantly, how to light up my subjects in a way that shows the brilliantly beautiful colors of the underwater world. Just as in photography, with video, the most important ingredient is lighting. GoPros can and do take exceptional, high-quality video when provided with the right lighting conditions. The problem with most underwater GoPro footage is not the GoPro itself, or the subject matter, but rather the lighting.

How Light Behaves Underwater

Water absorbs light very quickly, starting with the slowest wavelengths – red, then orange, then yellow. After passing through only 15 ft of water, light loses all red wavelengths, and then the other colors follow.

GoPro Version Matters

Before I go too far, let me qualify the piece about lighting. Great lighting with an old GoPro will give you decent footage, but old GoPros can’t compete with the latest GoPro image quality. The performance step change from the GoPro 5 to the GoPro HERO6 Black was massive. Check out the underwater photography guide’s review of the GoPro HERO6 Black. The improvement from the 6 to the 7 was not very big for image quality, but it was huge for image stabilization. So to get nice image quality from your GoPro, upgrade to at least a 6. If you want incredibly smooth, professional-looking footage when shooting handheld, the 7 is by far the best choice, as you can see in the GoPro HERO7 Black detailed review.

What Lighting to Use?

My partner Lisa, being new to underwater imaging, was at first very resistant to using any lights with the GoPro. Lights are big, heavy, and expensive. Doesn’t that defeat the whole purpose of the GoPro? So we started off with a Light & Motion Sidekick Duo, which is a very compact underwater light designed to be connected directly to the GoPro mount, thus not adding much in the way of size or weight. In some situations it added some nice color, but overall we found it was just too limited in terms of positioning, power and beam angle. Some videos it would add some nice color, but others it would create a hotspot on the subject, or just light up a ton of particles in the water, making it look like it was snowing.

We also used a Sealife Aquapod Mini, which gave us extra reach with the GoPro, theoretically allowing us to get closer to subjects without scaring them. It was useful when snorkeling with sharks in French Polynesia, and for dipping in the water from a boat to capture action at the surface. However, for day-to-day use while diving, we found that the benefit of getting closer to subjects was outweighed by the disadvantage of having the GoPro on a long stick; stability. It was very hard to get stable video, especially in any kind of current. Not to say a setup with a Sealife Aquapod and Sidekick light are bad; I would say it is a pretty decent setup for casual snorkelers who just want some videos of their trip so they can remember things. However, we were interested in higher quality video.

Our current GoPro rig – Hero 7 black, Macromate mini flip diopter, tray with ball mounts, 2x Kraken 3500+ WRSU lights.

As it became apparent that we had outgrown our video setup, and wanted something better, we decided to go for it. We bought a tray with handles and two small video lights. This is when things got good. The tray helped us get stable video – holding the GoPro close to the body with two hands was a lot more stable than holding it on a long stick with one hand. And we could not place the tray down on a rock or on the sand to get it really stable. We tried some different lights, including SeaLife Sea Dragon 2000 lumen lights, which gave us some nice results. Now we have landed on the Kraken 3500+ WRSU lights, which provide a ton of power, as well as versatility of modes: flood beam, spot beam, red light and UV light, all with different power settings available.

Check out our sample footage using the Sealife Sea Dragon 2000 lumen lights below, and you can read more about these lights on the UWPG’s Sealife 2000 lumen video light review. The review also contains a comparison video showing footage taken with two lights vs footage taken with just a red filter, vs footage taken without any lights or filters.

How Many Lights? How Many Lumens?

For wide angle video, having one light is much better than no lights, and also much better than a filter. However, having two lights will allow you to position them further away from the GoPro lens, which means you light up less particulates in the water and get cleaner video.

The amount of lighting power you need depends on the conditions you will be using them in. The brighter the ambient light, the more powerful the video lights need to be, if you want to overpower the dull blue ambient light and restore the colors. Though if you go really shallow, you can capture nice colors with ambient light, especially with the sun at your back. So with that said, a good starting point for light power is the 2000-4000 lumen range. Under 2000 lumens and you really don’t have enough power or reach for many situations, and over 4000 lumens you are starting to get into higher end, more professional light systems. With 2000 lumen lights, you can get very nice colors, but only if you are no more than 1-2 feet from your subject. Anything more than that and you’ll want more lumens…but even with really powerful video lights you won’t see much effect beyond about 5 ft.

On the other end of things, if you really want the best quality underwater video you can get, then go for the 10,000 lumen + range – it sure will look nice! The store recently got in the new Sola Pro 12,000 and 15,000 lumen lights, which will give you some amazing video quality.

For macro video, you have to bring the lights in close anyway, so one light should do the trick. A second light does give you more lighting options, but you can make very nice macro video just using one. If you want to learn more about shooting GoPro macro video, check out our beginner’s guide to GoPro macro video, up on the UWPG. Additionally, since you will only be a few inches from your subject, 2000-3000 lumens is more than enough light for nice, bright colors and sharp details.

The below sample macro footage is shot with a GoPro 7 and Macromate mini, and a variety of video light powers (2000, 2500 and 3500 lumens).  Without lights, macro video tends to look quite colorless and flat, as expected…it really loses its magic. So I would not recommend trying your hand at macro without a light!

The Bottom Line

We have used our GoPro with tray, video lights and macro lens to create promotional videos for a few dive resorts, and they have all been very happy with the results.

As they say in the movies…lights, camera, action! With just the camera, and no lights, you can get some decent footage under ideal conditions (ie at or near the surface of the water). But if you really want to get consistently great underwater footage, you need all 3. Sufficiently powerful video lights, a GoPro 6 or 7, and some great underwater action!

Hit me up at bryan AT uwphotographyguide.com if you have any questions!

The post Getting professional-quality video by using video lights with a GoPro first appeared on In Focus Underwater Photography Blog.

We’ve been talking a lot about the fantastic video autofocus in the Canon 7D Mark II and the 70D, as well as a new series of GoPro video tutorials, so today we offer a tip for your dive trip videos. Add a time-lapse!

What is a Time-Lapse?

You’ve certainly seen a time-lapse – a section of video where the clouds, people, waves or other elements appear to be sped up, yet very jumpy in the frame. Time-lapses are easy to create and the perfect way to show the passage of time in your dive trip video (i.e. from an afternoon arrival to the next morning when the diving starts).

Time-Lapses are simply a sequence of photos shot at set intervals over a period of time. When dropped into an editing timeline, these photos are played quickly, creating the time-lapse.

How to Create a Time-Lapse

Time-lapses are easy to record, but it does take a little planning. What movement will you see in the time-lapse? Subjects like clouds, waves, dive boats coming and going, stars, people moving about, etc. are ideal, as they will give the time-lapse that sense of passing time.

GoPros have built-in time-lapse functionality, however mirrorless and DSLR shooters will need an intervalometer to set and record their time-lapse. I’ve been using the Michron (by Alpine Labs), which makes recording a time-lapse very, very easy.

The Michron device is tiny and plugs right into your camera hot shoe mount. The Michron is programmed from your mobile phone, where you can change between built-in presets for your subject (clouds, people, pets, stars, etc). The app will set the interval between shots (i.e. 10 seconds for clouds) and a duration of the time-lapse (i.e. 1.5 hrs for clouds) so that you have a nice time-lapse clip to add to your video when editing. The Michron is also capable of advanced time-lapse and shooting techniques like bulb ramping, sliding and motion, and long single exposures.

I’ll be putting together some diving time-lapses from Bluewater Photo’s Anilao workshop this May, but in the meantime, here is an example of time-lapses edited into a :30 second video.

Let’s see your diving time-lapses on the Bluewater Photo Facebook page!

– Brent Durand

The post Video Tip: Add a Time-lapse first appeared on In Focus Underwater Photography Blog.

The new Sony RX100 camera has been performing really well, exceeding everyone’s expectations and beliefs about what can be achieved with a compact camera. This video sample below, by EunJae Im in the Philippines is a perfect example. The camera not only takes great quality, detailed images, but excels with stunning video capabilities as well. Enjoy the video. it was shot with the Nauticam RX100 housing and Light & Motion Sola lights. Subsee diopters were used for the macro shots.

Sony RX100 Underwater Video Sample from EunJae Im on Vimeo.

The post Stunning Nauticam RX100 Video first appeared on In Focus Underwater Photography Blog.

Enjoy the video. I’m very happy what the OM-D can do with video, it handled the low light and over all blue tone of the water well. I did not white balance, as I had the one Sola 1200 (though two would have been much better!) and in general the detail in the video is great.

The post Clear Viz on the Rigs – Olympus OM-D Video first appeared on In Focus Underwater Photography Blog.