Filming Coral Bleaching was easy with my Keldan Lights and Ambient Light Filters.
For such an emotional subject, I was happy to have reliable light.
Keldan Lights
The underwater continuous lights that I turn to for filming bright and colorful scenes.
The Subject - Bleached White Corals
A proper balance is important, even when the color is omitted from the main subject.
Keldan’s ambient light filters helped me achieve this balance in camera and the results yielded properly exposed, highly defined videos of a very tricky subject, bleached white corals in bright blue water.
The Location - Florida’s Lower Keys
Much of the color was drained from the Corals in Looe Key Marine Sanctuary from the mass bleaching event in the late summer of 2023. Bleaching is a naturally occurring event that stressful environments can exacerbate, and this event was the most severe bleaching I have ever witnessed underwater- and corals are one of the main subjects I have documented over time. I witnessed giant, living, corals completely white.
The Conditions - Amazing
Aside from the heat.
Clear, blue water. Glassy surface, very little wind, and no sign of the cooling relief of rain.
The water clarity combined with the substantial Florida sun made this shallow reef site averaging about 7m in depth very bright and challenging- but I was prepared with Keldan Ambient Light Filters as well as a 502b monitor that helped immensely to properly expose the levels in bright conditions.
The Gear - Keldan Lights and Nauticam Housings
A reliable combination.
- Panasonic GH5s with Nauticam Housing
- Nauticam WWL-1 over a Panasonic 14-42 Lens in a flat port
- Small HD 502b Monitor and Nauticam Housing
- 2 Keldan 4x with M1 ambient light filters
- White Balance card
I use a medium depth filter as I have always found this filter to work wonders in bright Caribbean waters and they did not disappoint.
White Balance with Keldan is Easy
I turned on my lights to medium-low, white balanced facing the sun and then logged another facing away on the surface, descended and repeated, and was ready to go for the shallow reef. I move between 4 logged white balances as a base in shallow conditions like this to easily switch- this is also key for proper color while freediving.
Bright Underwater Conditions Demand Light
It's easy to believe the contrary.
When you’re working with such bright and undiffused light from the sun it will create harsh shadows. The amount of detail I was looking to capture required me to fill in these shadows to eliminate distractions. The adjusted color of the lights provided by the ambient light filters allowed me to fill the shadows properly.
Further, using white light at depth instead of filtered light causes the subject to put off a different value to the sun filtered through water.
Ultimately, when the subject is white, like bleached coral we have no choice but to adjust our white balance to that color. Therefore, with regular 5600 Kelvin lights underwater (sunlight value) to maintain true white on the coral- the filmmaker must sacrifice the blue color of their water….
Or use Keldan Ambient Light Filters
To accurately document a tricky subject.
I had true blues throughout this documentation process thanks to Keldan, a company that cares about color so I can care about coral.
