Anybody making 30 to 60 thousand lumen dive lights? Besides Big Blue??

[Calabash Digger]

I have used a 10 degree 4800 lumen before and to be honest I find the two 120 degree to have a better field of view. My face is normally planted to the bottom anyway. I am not asking the lights to cut thru much. I am doing business with the light setup I have and it works very well for what I do.
I am just the guy that is always looking for better....Now to be fair the narrow I used did not have much spill over. I might buy a 8000 narrow light head and try in with 120 wide …. might be a match made in heaven there.

 

[Calabash Digger]

1) there is no "standard" for measuring lumens.....some companies measure it right at the emitter, others measure it at some distance....thats why a "1000 lumen" light from company A is drastically different than a "1000 lumen" from company B

head over to the CandlePower forums if you really want to geek out over flashlights and how to measure light output.

but no, that "10,000 Lumen" light you just bought is not really 10,000 lumens.

2) you can use "too much" light.

if you are diving in turbid waters.....all of that particulate in the water is going to bounce that light straight back at you (much like driving with high beams in a snow storm)....you will find that sometimes if you dial down the amount if light you are putting out, the better you will be able to see.


i have dove in some pretty dark, mucky and pretty turbid waters.....ive found 3 OrcaTorch D520s work pretty damn well.
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I have used the red lights built into my video lights before and it worked really well in the HEAVY particulate... I am trying to find the sweet spot as I said above. Maybe I AM OVER THINKING IT. I have been diving those lights for 10 months or so and they have worked very well.

 

[johndiver999]

When you place a wide angle and bright light on your head, you generate a huge halo of glowing water when the visibility is poor. As others have indicated, if you place the light on (or in) your hand, the lighting starts at your hands, so there is no illumination of a glowing ball in front of your face. If the visibility is only 3-4 feet, placing the light source 2 feet from your eyes will make a big benefit when trying to see something 3.5 feet away.

I also think a much less powerful and focused light will end up being more useful than just blasting more and more light from the top of your head. The dirtier the water, the greater the difference.

If you like the convenience of having some light on your head, you might try one or two SMALL focused lights on your mask straps - so you can see gauges and stuff, and then rely on a hand held and focused light in your hand. If you have small and focused lights on your head, the back scatter effect won't be too bad.

 

[Calabash Digger]

I dont use a light on my head I understand the halo effect go to the 2 minute mark. I have tried it before and saw its negative effects....our vizviz runs a 1 ft sometimes . To the point where you have have your face almost touching the bottom..
I think it was taken that my light setup was no good and that is why I was asking about the brighter lights. That is not the case at all ....I am the kinda person that likes anything that will give him a edge and I was thinking a 30 or 60 thousand lumen light might do that..... My light setup is actually very good and I have found some killer stuff underwater with it.

 

[M-Cameron]

so 30-60K lumens.....thats is on par with what you get from Stadium lighting for sports venues......

in order to get a true 60,000 lumen light, you are going to need a surface support generator to run the thing.

the other thing you need to think about is how much light do you actually need vs. how much light is being "wasted" illuminating something you arent looking at.

we have a pretty narrow field of view when we are diving, we only need to pack enough light into our view to see what we are looking at........it really doesnt matter what is being illuminated to the sides and behind us.

if your current torch is able to adequately light up what you are currently looking at......all the excess spill lighting isnt helping us see any better......it might make us think we are psychologically though.

think about reading a book, you are reading a book outside on a nice sunny day....lots of light.

and then you are reading a book in a dark room, but you have a nice bright light on the book illuminating the pages.

your mind is going to make you think you can see the book better outside on a sunny day, because you can see everything else better......but you arent looking at everything else in your periphery, are you?

same applies to diving.

 

[Diving Dubai]

Just so ya'all know

You're all been taken for a ride with light manufacturers who just quote Lumens.

These lumens will be measured at the surface of the array. By the time you have them in a light, you'll suffer losses from the focal lense, the collimator, and the lense cover dependant on their design and material they're constructed from

On top of this you'll get further losses cause by heat and the ability to dissipate that heat and of course also from the electronics

So a 1000 lumen chip array from the same chip manufacturer will have very different outputs in the final product from different manufacturers

We (in the real world) measure light output AND provide photometric tables showing the light output at varying distance.

No one is interested in the output of the source, what they want to know is the output at the subject xx distance away

Remember light is subject to the inverse square law. When you double the distance you quarter the light output.

This below is a REAL 30,000 Lumen (at 10m/33.3') light. I can sell you one, they're not cheap though

1.5m (60") Diameter
65kg (143lbs)

2800-6000 Kelvin (adjustable with +96%CRI)
Has an input power of 2400W

Beam angle of 11 degrees

at 10m (33') has a light output of 30525 Lux (30525lm/m2)

It's "quite bright"

 

[Diving Dubai]

Below is one of our photometric tables. It's for a 600W fixture (equivalent roughly to a 2500 conventional Tungsten fixture)

Things to note:

We show light output at min and max flood plus mid range of each (for proper transparency)

Look how the output drops off at distance (because these are for TV we don't bother with distances less than 2.0

Note there is a difference in output between the two arrays 3200K and 5600K There's also a slight difference in CRI (which is hugely important if you're using a light for video) we quote both CRI and TLCR, the latter is a colour index specifically designed for camera chips which "see" colours differently to the human eye

 

[Calabash Digger]

so 30-60K lumens.....thats is on par with what you get from Stadium lighting for sports venues......

in order to get a true 60,000 lumen light, you are going to need a surface support generator to run the thing.

the other thing you need to think about is how much light do you actually need vs. how much light is being "wasted" illuminating something you arent looking at.

we have a pretty narrow field of view when we are diving, we only need to pack enough light into our view to see what we are looking at........it really doesnt matter what is being illuminated to the sides and behind us.

if your current torch is able to adequately light up what you are currently looking at......all the excess spill lighting isnt helping us see any better......it might make us think we are psychologically though.

think about reading a book, you are reading a book outside on a nice sunny day....lots of light.

and then you are reading a book in a dark room, but you have a nice bright light on the book illuminating the pages.

your mind is going to make you think you can see the book better outside on a sunny day, because you can see everything else better......but you arent looking at everything else in your periphery, are you?

same applies to diving.

Ok point taken.... Stand 3 ft from a wall draw a 12 inch circle then draw a 3 ft circle . Which one would you rather be looking at in a zero sunlight environment? I can tell you which one I like better in a blacked out underwater environment.

As far as lights not really being what they are advertised as well I was VERY ignorant to that fact before this post...No matter if they work they work...With the lumens being exaggerated I really dont need 30 or 60 maybe only 15 or 20...or maybe I will just stay with what I got . Thanks everyone for all the input... here is a 2 min video of 3 different lights in dark water. Which do you prefer?

 

[Calabash Digger]

One more question though....Has anyone in this thread actually taken down a TRUE 15 or 20 thousand lumen wide beam light and tried in the dark water like I am showing in my videos? Like a Big Blue 33000 or 60000 lumen which according to yhall is really just half or under that of the real lumens? Or any other companies light?

 

[tbone1004]

@M-Cameron there is a standard for measuring lumens, most companies don't do it and just quote the theoretical lumen of the emitters vs the actual output lumen.

@Diving Dubai why is that light so inefficient? 12.5 lumen/watt?

@calabash digger the true 10,000 lumen video lights from UWLD are not great in black water. Far too much back scatter.