Buying Guides

Choosing Video Lights For Your GoPro

GoPro cameras are awesome! No doubt about that. They work great above water and produce stunning video and cool wide-angle photos. The problem starts underwater…  All your footage comes out blue and all those vivid colors are simply not there when you get home.

The Solution!  Underwater Video Lights

As you all know, colors fade away the deeper you dive underwater. This proves difficult for photographers, as the essence of photography is capturing light and color. Even at a shallow depth of 15ft/5m, your GoPro starts producing blue-green footage, which ends up being boring and lifeless.

Sure, filters help. A red filter brings back some of the red hues and produces a nicer result, but it doesn’t really produce natural colors. For that, you will need to introduce artificial light!

Since the GoPro is a fairly basic camera, it suffers from limited dynamic range and WB range. This makes it even more important to provide the GoPro’s sensor with good lighting.

Choosing the right light could be a daunting process. With so many options out there, what’s the best underwater video light for your GoPro?

How many lumens do I need for shooting underwater with a Gopro?

Let’s start with a video light’s most dominant feature – Lumens!

In the end, it all boils down to power.  Light intensity is measured by lumens and the more the merrier. Contrary to common belief, you cannot have too much light.

A GoPro is used to working in bright sunlight conditions, which produces far brighter light than anything you can generate with a LED light. It will adjust to the amount of light you produce.

With that said, it is a factor of distance as well.  If you shine a really bright light from a very close distance, such as when shooting macro, you may reach the limit of the GoPro and wash out (overexpose) the scene. The good thing is that all lights can be dimmed – set to a lower power mode for macro situations, so it’s not really a limitation.

The more lumens you have, the better, and the further away you will be able to light up a subject.

So how many lumens do you really need? as I mentioned before, the more lumens you have, the better, and the further away you will be able to light up a subject.
LED technology is advancing very fast, so what I’m writing right now may not be relevant in two years time, but at this point in the market, 1000-2000 lumens would be a nice basic light, 3000-5000 would be a medium range light, and 8000-12000 would be some serious lighting power.

Remember that beam angle and whether you’re using one or two lights is also an important consideration.

Lumens measure the total amount of light but 1000 lumens on a 10 degree beam is way more light than 5000 lumens on a 90 degree beam.

You can read more about beam angle in the Ultimate Guide to Underwater Video Lights, but here I will only mention that since the GoPro has a wide angle fisheye lens, it’s best to use 2 lights over one, so that you can light up the entire frame and get nice coverage. If you’re using 1 light, then make sure it’s a very wide beam. You may still get fairly dark corners, but the majority of the frame and your subject will be well lit.

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Light Modes

As opposed to video lights for regular cameras such as compact, mirrorless or DSLR, with a GoPro you will likely need just one mode on your light – Flood. This would be the main mode for shooting either photos or videos.

That being said, Spot mode can come in handy, when using it as a dive light to spot marine life. I usually like to dive with my spot light on, checking little crevices and hideouts to find cool critters. When I start shooting, I would switch to flood mode, record and then back to spot light when I’m done. This would also conserve battery life, as spot feature uses less power than flood.

Another cool mode that you might want to experiment with is UV / Blue light, AKA fluorescence photography. With this mode, you will also need a yellow filter on your GoPro, and a yellow mask filter, to witness and record the cool effect of fluorescence underwater.

Red mode, which is usually used as a focus light on night dives for compact cameras, isn’t really needed with a GoPro.

Tray and mounts

There are a variety of ways to mount lights to your GoPro:

  1. Mount GoPro directly to light
  2. Create some distance between the light and the GoPro
  3. Use a tray and arm set – single or dual

Mount GoPro directly to light

This method is quick, easy, compact and cheap. The actual adapters you need depend on the mount of the light you chose to use, but the most common method is to get a ball mount for your GoPro, add a standard 1″ ball clamp, then mount the light on the other side of it. If the light has a ball mount – great! If it has a YS mount, use this YS to Ball adapter to connect it to the clamp.

The problem with this method is backscatter. Your light will be very close to the actual lens, resulting in unavoidable backscatter in your frame from the little particles in the water. That’s why I wouldn’t recommend it with strong lights, or with poor visibility. Use this method with a 1000 lumen light in Cozumel-visibility or similar.

Create Distance between the Light and the GoPro

This method involves using the above ball mount and clamp method, but adding another arm segment and clamp between the light and GoPro. This is still relatively cheap and easy, usually solves the problem of backscatter as your light is further away from the lens, and highly customizable, as you can use any length or arm segment that works for you.

The difficulty here is that the rig becomes a bit messy, and there’s no real shape to the whole thing.

Use a tray and arm set

This would be the preferred method to mount a light on your GoPro. There are plenty of trays out there, most consist of a base tray, where you mount your GoPro, and an arm of some sort on which you mount the light.

Since Gopro is a very compact camera and you’d want to have a very compact setup, we would recommend the following tray systems:

GoPro Single Flex Arm

Single Flex Arm GoPro Tray

For those of you who are looking for a compact and affordable rig, this single tray is great for mounting one powerful light to your GoPro, featuring a comfortable grip, medium length flex arm and a GoPro mount.

MORE INFO

Dual Flex Arm GoPro Tray (Ball Ends)

A very simple tray with flex arms that includes ball mount at the end so you are able to mount every light in the market.

MORE INFO

Dual Ball and Joint GoPro Tray

These type of mounts are stronger, the downside is that they require 2 hands to reposition underwater and that the tray is slightly more expensive.

MORE INFO

 

Best Underwater Video Lights for GoPro (Updated Nov 2022)

Big Blue VL4200PB

The Big Blue VL4200PB is one of the best value for money lights you can get. Producing over 4000 lumens with a retail price of just under $400! It’s also easy to handle underwater, since it is slightly positive, so it won’t weigh you down.

Big Blue lights are reliable and very popular among divers. In our opinion, the 4200 model is just right for action camera shooters, in terms of size, price and output.

Another fun bonus – all Big Blue lights are now being shipped in a dry bag, instead of the regular packaging!

MORE INFO

Sola 2500 Video Light

Light and Motion Sola 2500 Flood

The Sola lights are well known in the market, with their distinct spring loaded control lever, factory sealed body and high quality beam. With a beam angle of 60 degrees, we recommend getting two of these to cover the entire GoPro frame.

MORE INFO

Big Blue Black Molly VB

Big Blue Black Molly VB

The Black Molly is one of the best value lights in the market, with a very high ratio of lumens per dollar. It comes with an integrated ball mount, yellow filter for warming up the light and long battery life.

MORE INFO

Big Blue CB6500P

Big Blue CB7200P

For those of you who value quality, Big Blue recently released a new line of CB lights, which feature a high CRI (85) LED for the best quality of light possible and true color rendering.

The CB7200p is very compact compared to the strong output it can produce, and remains quite affordable with a price tag of just under $500 USD.

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Kraken Solar Flare Mini 15,000

The Solar Flare Mini is a beautiful light and a monster of power! Beautifully designed, with a very quality body, it can produce a powerful 15,000 lumens beam of flood light, emitted by a single LED at a 120 degree beam angle. The extra wide angle beam is possible due to the dome element on the front of the light (don’t worry, it comes with a neoprene cover!).

Control the power output with two buttons on the top, left button to increase power and the right one to decrease.

The light head is water resistant! So even in the rare case of a flood, your main investment is fully protected.

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Light and Motion SOLA Video Pro 15,000 FC

Sola video pro 15,000 is the ultimate imaging light for the serious pro with a new patented cooling system to deliver the best performance in the industry and ushering a new era of constant lighting for underwater imaging specialists.  It’s pretty expensive but we’re mentioning it here for Gopro due to its compact size compared to the amount of light it produces.

15,000 lumens at a 110 degree beam angle, with a floodproof design and OLED Dashboard Display for monitoring settings, battery life, etc.

Integrated Li-ion battery charges completely in 1hr 45 min!

MORE INFO

How do I know which tray and arm will fit each light and what mount is required ?

Make the decision even easier with our Ready-To-Dive GoPro light packages! Determine your budget and pick the bundle that works best for you!

Here are some of the most popular packages we’ve put together for you:

SOLA 2500 Gopro Package VL10000 Single Gopro Packafe Black Molly V Gopro Set CB6500P Gopro Dual Package

Conclusion

Getting quality footage from your GoPro depends on the quality of lights you get and how easy it is to control your setup underwater. Remember that a GoPro is a great base for a setup, but to get really good results, lights are crucial.

If you still can’t decide on the right light and tray for your needs, contact us via the online chat of over the phone. We’d love to help!

 

Ran Mor
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