Once you descend below a few feet underwater photographs begin to be all greens and blue. The reason is that water absorbs the red light, leaving a very skewed color balance in the images. Thus bringing a light source with you becomes important to allow the underwater world to be seen in vivid color.
Enter the Sola Photo 800 by Light and Motion… The Sola offers a nice flood with an even field of illumination for video. Several of my dive buddies use Sola lights, Thus I have had a chance to check out the lights firsthand before putting down a few hundred dollars. I was particularly noting the build quality and the control setup, both are excellent. With dozens of dives on the lights they still work well. Perhaps I should consider one of these little units?
There are several models available, but it is the photo version I was looking at. The light provides 800 lumens of white in an evenly illuminated, large field. The photo version also offers a red mode for framing and focusing that purportedly does not change the behavior of the subject. Deep red light is not seen by many marine critters as there is little to no red light at depth to be seen.
A coincidence of decent sales on the Sola lights occurring on my birthday resulted in a package appearing on my lanai. I ordered light with both the hand grip mount and with a ball mount that will allow attachment to my camera rigs.