Need big boy light to help our two Divas
 

We have two Divas with tungsten and daylight bulbs. These work great for interviews, macro work and to bump up various situations. We also have a lowel pro 3 light kit.

The problem we sometimes face is having to throw daylight into a 20 foot deep massive aquarium. We are a public aquarium so throwing light into water and sometimes into big spaces comes into play. We can always rent, but truthfully it is a pain an expensive to send someone to get the lighting.

If we could get one light, that we could run off normal outlets, that would be mind numbingly expensive, what would it be?

Trying to get daylight balanced 20ft into water?

Depending on just at what level it needs to be at to compete with the other light sources at play, I'd think you could only do this with like a 4k HMI par or bigger.

Somebody else here might have actually done this, but I think it's gonna take an awful big gun.

We don't need magic to happen at 20 feet we just need increased light. One wall of the tank is 10 inch acrylic and it functions as a full cutaway of the pool. We've pumped our little 250watt lights in from the top, and we've been able to get a bit more detail on the rock work, and it helped but not nearly what we'd want.

The type of lighting and the exact colour temp at exact depth doesn't really matter. Just an overall increase in light would help. We often do media events out of the pool and we just need something a little beefier to bump up the ambient lighting.

I was thinking in the 1-2k range.

Almost all the light of note comes from overhead skylights. The intensity varies based on time of day and weather, but that is fine with us.

loss
 

I did a Scuba story with stills at an indoor pool years a go and I had a big loss with the lights reflecting off the surface of the water. I submerged the strobe heads and used an underwater window all from the same direction. Shadows were no deeper but the high light and detail was now hotter. Maybe this would give you a germ of an idea.
Lew Stamp

Jeff, check out Coollights, Richard Andrewki's company. He's got some reasonably priced HMI's.

Of course, your aquarium is huge but you can look to the aquarium world to see what they do on a miniature scale to get some clues to this puzzle. Fluorescent and metal halide (probably in that order) are the popular choices there. Because of throw, fluorescent is probably out of the question because we're talking too deep in your case.

I would think some metal halide lights above and shining down into the pool would be the most efficient and the fish would probably love it too because you'll most likely use a high color temperature like 5000K (daylight) or above to accomplish this. Should really look great. You can find lots of options around that at the aquarium supply stores online where they have metal halide bulbs and ballasts and DIY is quite common in that world.

Whatever you do of course you want it to have some level of humidity proofing. A conventional stage / studio fixture above the tank is probably not ideal.

Businesslights.com is one such supply:

http://www.businesslights.com/

Also, marine depot:

http://www.marinedepot.com/ps_Aquari...ng__index.html

Hope this helps.

You could use a 1.2K par HMI. You can run that off a 20 amp curcuit.
Depending on the lens you use, it will throw a beam a long way.

Agreed, that's your best bang for a unit that will plug into a 20 amp circuit. You can fulfill the "mind-numbingly expensive" factor by having an array of them if you like! Note that the late-model ones, particularly the Arri's, will have much better photometrics than older units that you might see up for sale used.

You may also want to contact Pace Tech, http://www.pacetech.com/ and look at their u/w HMI's. I know rental is an issue for you but if you want to light an aquarium the best place to put the light is in the aquarium.

Sounds like you should rent and try before you buy.