Review of the Salvo 35W Video Lighting System
by Liz HanksBoring Background (Skip)
I ventured into underwater videography about a year ago after doing underwater photography for 15 years. I decided to start off with a Sony HC3 in a Seatool housing, and use my existing modeling light (the 20W halogen Fisheye FIX Light) as a temporary video light. The combination made for a very lightweight and compact setup, ideal for travel. Most of my diving is done in the Monterey California area though, with only a single far away tropical dive per year, so I soon started looking into more powerful lighting solutions. I was surprised at how difficult it was to find a system that met my requirements:- High power
- Long burn time
- Good diffusion for wide angle shots
- Bottom-heavy
(for stability)
- Integratable
with my Seatool housing
While I was deep into investigative mode, my dive buddy gave me a 10W HID UK Light Cannon for Christmas. I quickly bought a second one, and with his help, mounted them both with a pair of Loc-Line arms to my housing. I decided this was a good stop-gap measure while I found an ideal high-powered solution. With the highest potency rechargeable C cell batteries available, I got 4.5 hours of burn time, which meant no recharging necessary during my typical 4-5 dive weekends in the cold Monterey waters. The new lights made my housing very top heavy under certain shooting conditions though, and had a pronounced hot spot, so the search continued.
I discovered that one of the local dive shops carried the Green Force lights and were quite happy with their customer's feedback. I had already decided that a pair of Green Force HID 100 Impact with an 110 degree flood lens and a pair of Flexi III canisters would do nicely. They were advertised as 30W HIDs, the burn time as 3 hours, and a nice wide beam. I spent the next few months trying to verify that the HID 100 Impact were in fact 30W HIDs (since there is apparently no such bulb or ballast). After numerous phone calls, e-mails, and web searches, the answer finally came from a French underwater video forum. One of the divers had bought a HID 100 Impact, unscrewed the lid, and discovered a 21W HID bulb inside. At around the same time, I heard that the beam angles on some of the Green Force lights were also overstated (110 degrees was really something like 80). Also at around the same time, my videographer dive buddy reminded me to take a look at the Salvo lights.
I think I had originally dismissed Salvo because I couldn't find out information on things like beam angles on their site and their setup seemed more geared for cave divers than videographers. I looked again, made a list of questions, called the guys up, and placed an order within a day. I settled on a pair of 35W HID light heads, each with its own 15.6 amp Li-Ion battery and canister (note that the pictures on their site all show two light heads sharing a single canister but alternatives are available).
The Lights
The standard configuration for the Salvo 35W HID light heads and the 15.6 amp Li-Ion battery and canister includes two light heads, a single canister, and a wet Y connector joining the three pieces. This is set up so that a single large canister can be mounted on your tank or BC and disconnected from your housing and lights when jumping in the water or getting back onto the boat. It's just as easy to order separate light head/canister pairs, along with fixed (or wet) connectors of any length.
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The light heads come standard with three tapped 1/4"-20 holes for mounting video arms. I also ordered a universal adapter to mount the lights onto my existing UltraLight arms. |
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The light heads
are quite large, especially in comparison to the tiny Seatool HC3
housing, but their output justifies the size. The bulb in the light head is sealed behind a thick test tube that slides over a pair of O-rings. For light output comparison purposes, Salvo has published a chart along with a picture showing the intensities of various focusable lights. |
The Arms
I already owned parts for two separate arm systems (Loc-Line/Flex arms and Ultralight) and needed to chose between them for the initial setup with the Salvo lights. The Salvo light heads are pretty heavy but would still have worked pretty well with the thicker gauge Loc-Lines. Connectors are always a problem with the flexible arm systems though, and I wanted to see how I liked the combination of Ultralight ( ULCS) arms and video lights, so I went with those.The ULCS arm systems also have the advantage of adding positive buoyancy to the overall system, something my new setup desperately needed. I found out that in spite of the ULCS web site not being up-to-date, there were some new extra thick buoyancy arms out there. The manufacturer codes are of the form "ULCS DB-BLxx", compared to the older "ULCS DB-Bxx", which are thinner and less buoyant. I ordered 4 of the DB-BL12's as well as 4 ULCS BA-AQN base adapters (2 for the housing and 2 for future use with the light heads, if necessary).
The Custom Bracket
In order to secure the large battery canisters to the bottom of the housing, a custom bracket had to be built. Most housings don't lend themselves to easily adding unexpected appendages to their bottoms. Luckily, I have a very generous and smart dive buddy with the willingness, skill set, and tools to build such an animal. Unluckily, said dive buddy had to move recently to the East coast. Power Points with design drawings, pictures with annotated measurements, and PDFs with housing scans flew back and forth as e-mail attachments until a concrete plan had been finalized.
Since the extra handle and its screws would be in the way of the battery canisters, the bracket was designed to have two levels: a top level with a main plate that secures onto the bottom of the housing, and a bottom level with one piece for each canister to screw into. The two levels were separated by spacers to give the extra handle a place to slide into. Double-sided tape was added to the bottom of the housing to secure the main plate further and take a bit of pressure off the screws.
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The remaining work consisted of attaching the battery canisters to the very bottom of the bracket system.
The key piece that did the trick was a plastic "lyre" which can clamp nicely on to a canister and has a hole at its base for a screw. These parts don't seem to be available in the U.S., so my trusty dive buddy brought some back with him on his last trip to France. The metal rings that came with the canisters were kept to add some extra security as they prevent the canister from sliding back and forth.
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