Underwater Dive Lights – Why you need them, and when to use them

The underwater world features a spectrum of colors much different from what you can experience on the surface. From yellow and orange sun coral to bright blue tangs and sea stars, there is so much beauty to explore and capture. But colors appear different underwater due to the water’s absorption of natural light as you go deeper and deeper. If you’ve ever taken photos underwater, you’ll notice that the colors aren’t very vibrant, even when shooting in the middle of the day. And if you want to take photos on a night dive, you’re totally out of luck! And that is why you need an underwater dive light. In this article, we’ll examine underwater dive lights, when you should use them, and all the benefits of using them to enhance your underwater experience.

What is an underwater dive light?

If you’ve been cave diving or diving at night, you’ve definitely used a dive light. Most often, divers use headlamps or carry torches to help illuminate the area around them. While this is always necessary during the night or when cave diving, it is also helpful during the day to explore shipwrecks, go through crevices, and inject color back into the surroundings. Various styles of dive lights are available, all tailored for specific functions. The four main categories of dive lights include:

• Primary underwater dive lights

• Backup underwater dive lights

• Photo/video underwater dive lights

• Safety underwater dive lights

1. Primary underwater dive lights

Primary underwater dive lights are the most powerful and are used to light up large areas under the water. Their batteries can last a long time, making them ideal for long cave diving excursions, shipwreck dives, or night dives where you need prolonged, strong lighting. They can be heavier and bulkier and usually have a pistol-style grip. These aren’t ideal for getting up close to marine life since the bright light can stress them out and scare them off.

2. Backup underwater dive lights

Backup underwater dive lights are lightweight, smaller, and used as a secondary light in case the primary light fails. This backup light is small enough to fit in your pocket and provides minimal light to safely get the diver back to the surface if the primary light no longer functions.

3. Photo/video underwater dive lights

If you want to take your underwater photos and videos to the next level, you need to have a photo/video underwater dive light. These dive lights are smaller in size and lightweight, helping to illuminate your subjects with continuous light so your camera can capture them more effectively. Without one, almost everything will appear with a blueish tinge and look cloudy or murky in photos because of lack of light, water currents, and sediment floating in the water. There are many underwater dive lights for photos/videos on the market, so how do you choose the best one? When looking for an underwater dive light to use for underwater photography, you want to select a light that can ideally be attached to your GoPro or underwater camera mount. If you’re using your smartphone in an underwater iPhone case, a dive light that mounts directly on the bottom, between the phone and grip/handle, will give you the most optimal coverage and ease of use. Our new underwater dive light is compatible with all GoPro mounts, so you can attach it to floating handles, tripods, or extendable pole mounts.

Dive light diffusers

Even using a quality dive light underwater may still not give you the highest saturation of color since you can’t fully replicate the natural sunlight. But you can help to rebalance the colors absorbed by the water by using a colored dive light diffuser. Our underwater dive lights come with frosted white, purple, and orange filters, which can be slotted directly onto the light, helping to balance out the colors of marine life, which allows you to capture them in their true colors. Each colored light filter serves a different purpose. Here is a quick breakdown of how you can use the different dive light diffusers effectively:

• Frosted white: The frosted light filter helps to dilute and soften the light, so it's not as harsh on the surrounding. This is especially important when taking photos of marine life since the bright light may reflect off their eyes and scales and negatively impact your images. Plus, if you're doing a night dive then the harsh light is more likely to scare them off.

• Purple: The purple filter is especially effective for neutralizing green tones when diving in places like quarries, lakes and rivers. The abundance of algae in these bodies of water can cause lower visibility, and the purple tones of the light will help you to see more clearly.

• Orange: The orange dive light filter is best suited for deep ocean dives. As the red and orange tones are the first to disappear as you descend, your surroundings will quickly begin to appear bluer. Using a dive light with an orange filter will help to balance out those blue tones to make coral and marine life appear closer to their true colors, which will make your photos and videos look more saturated.

4. Safety underwater dive lights

All divers should have a safety light, which can signal their position to other divers. It’s easy to drift away from your buddy due to unpredictable currents, and you can quickly lose sight of each other, even when diving during the day. Safety underwater dive lights are strobes that send off flashing lights that are more noticeable and will draw attention to your position. These strobe lights also mark water exit points on night dives and may be attached to the dive boat.

When should you use an underwater dive light?

It goes without saying that an underwater dive light should always be used in the dark. If you’re diving in caves, shipwrecks, or past 30 meters, it will be too dark to see without a dive light, even in the middle of the day. But even when diving in shallow waters during the day, every diver should have a safety strobe, at the very least. If you intend to capture any of your dives on photo or video, then we’d recommend attaching a dive light. Using one will take your photos and videos to the next level, making coral, fish, and other marine life look even more vibrant and in focus (especially when using color filters). You’ll want to use a dive light designed for the specific function you need it for. Using a large, powerful primary dive light isn’t a good option for shooting photos since it will spook the marine life you’re trying to capture. But a smaller photo/video dive light won’t be enough to illuminate pitch-black, deep caves fully.

Some of the most interesting and unique marine life, like octopuses and eels, hide out in cracks and crevices, and you’ve likely swam right by them without even noticing. An underwater dive light can help illuminate those hard-to-see areas so you can spot marine life more effectively.

Underwater dive lights

Underwater dive lights will enhance your underwater experience by enabling you to see and capture aquatic life more effectively. With colors and light disappearing as you descend, illumination makes all the difference! There are really no cons to having an underwater dive light handy each time you dive. And with dive lights that mount directly onto the underwater accessories you’re already using, there’s no extra bulk. Check out our new underwater dive light, with bonus colored filters, and get ready to take jaw-dropping photos and videos of your underwater experiences.