Are corded lights a thing of the past?

[GF99/99]

I was browsing the internet for cave lights and was also chatting to a buddy who is doing her cave course. Can light is expensive. I thought they will be the better option. My buddy told me no no. Those are ancient now. Everyone uses cordless. You can buy two Dive Rite LX-20 for the price of one EX-35. If you carry the addtional in your pocket, when a light faolure happens you can put it on goodman handle. With corded expensive EX-35, if light goes out it is done.

Which light should I do? Two LX20 carried together or one ex 30 with a longer burn time?

Here's the deal, and it's real simple.
Handheld lights are good enough for tourist cave diving. I will freely admit to using my LX20+ as a primary light or even a BX2 when I'm doing shorter dives because they're just easy. It is quite bright, very capable, and inexpensive, hard to beat. It has similar output to a 21w HID from years past and it burns for a tick over 2 hours. Since the max dive time for the vast majority of cave dives and cave divers is around 1.5hrs it's perfect for that. You hear the comments about "everyone uses cordless" but that's because none of them are doing anything other than tourist cave diving and there are very few of us regularly doing long dives.

What none of the handheld lights can do is touch the output of something like the EX35 or any of the lights from @Bobby who's newest bad-ass light is capable of a true 4,000 lumens out the front. You can't get that in a handheld for any length of time no matter how much lying that companies like Big Blue will do about their lights. They also can't get the weight down to anything reasonable on your hand if you are sensitive to things like that and if you're doing long dives it does add up.

If I were you I would get the LX20+ and a pair of normal backup lights. If at such time you need something like a heated vest, big video light, longer dives, or you decided that having a tiny light head that doesn't weigh anything is really nice then you'll end up buying a LD-40 and the LX20+ will become a backup primary in your pocket. You'll use it now and again for shorter dives, but it's there.

@tbone1004 nailed it.

So the answer is no corded lights are not a thing of the past. And the reality is we are someone going backwards, instead of making battery packs smaller divers are requiring larger batteries as the exploration limits of overhead diving are pushed and more lumens are requested. For example Gralmarine now has a 590Wh battery and I think more light manufactures are producing 160Wh batteries just to keep them under the fly limit however in reality most people actually want bigger.

But this depends on what kind of diving your doing and what your light/heating requirements are. Lights are just another part of your dive gear so you need to plan your dive based on the equipment. If your going tourist 2 tank cave diving then you plan your equipment accordingly so yes a cordless LX20 would be great. If your going exploration multiple stage diving then your going to need a light that is sufficient or the dive plan/run time plus contingency. This usually requires long burn times and sorry there are no cordless lights on the market that offer this. And if you have heating requirements then you need even more battery capacity. Down to even needing to stage heater batteries as well.

 

[rddvet]

Hope that’s not the GI3 meaning of stroke

No but the person with the primary on their helmet definitely falls under his definition

 

[Wibble]

No but the person with the primary on their helmet definitely falls under his definition

Would have been wonderful to see GI3 dive with the CDG (UK cave diving group) and the kit they use. All about the requirements of the dive site. Pretty much nothing is DIR compliant and a longhose almost never encountered.

Horses for courses.

 

[tbone1004]

Being that I’m a California diver and we don’t have caves here, there definitely is still a use for corded lights.
I remember lobster diving at night at the Channel Islands using a corded light. After grabbing a bug I hung the light over my left shoulder and it hung down lighting up my work at hand, measuring the bug and getting into the bag. An ex DIR diver and good friend of mine gave it to me, I think it was an 18 watt Halcyon or something? I know the bulbs were big bucks in those HID’s. I couldn’t get it to stop flickering so I gave it to another guy who was into those light more than me and he fixed it.
Anyway, I’ve been using LED hand helds ever since but I’m thinking I may get another corded light soon. I would need a wide beam to light up a larger area for scanning and hunting, it wouldn’t be for signaling.
I do a lot of scallop gathering and sometimes they are back in dark cracks. A corded light would be awesome to use because like motioned earlier, I could drape it over my shoulder when not needed and I wouldn’t have a hand held dangling around on my wrist.
Any suggestions?

You don't want video lights for that. The UWLD beam pattern is pretty legit for hunting since there is a pretty powerful corona for peripheral but it throws quite far. The wide spread lights don't penetrate far enough for that application IMO

 

[Eric Sedletzky]

You don't want video lights for that. The UWLD beam pattern is pretty legit for hunting since there is a pretty powerful corona for peripheral but it throws quite far. The wide spread lights don't penetrate far enough for that application IMO

This is perfect!

 

[billgraham]

I was a lab rat in a CCR diving study and the dives took place around Catalina, naturally we did some lobster dives. You actually want a super dim light for that, I was covering mine and sitting still, they march out of the caves at dusk!