Canister lights

[made4water]

currently i have the uk c8 eLed plus and the uk sl6. these lights are pretty cool and i always thought they were great until about a month ago while on a night dive in panama city i saw my first canister light. i always figured that they had to be bright, being they were so expensive but i have to admit that i was truly in awww at how magnificently bright these lights were. Im looking to get into cave diving and was needing to get one, but i was wondering how reliable these things were and some pros and cons of the various lights available. thanks in advance

Logan

 

[DA Aquamaster]

Halongen cannister lights are old tech, fairly inexpensive (on the used market, almost unavailable on the new market), offer much shorter burn times for a given battery pack size, have a more yellow tinted light due to the tungsten filament and appear less bright than a comparable or lesser sized HID light.

Most cannister light heads can be configured with a goodman handle or a strap to allow you nearely full use of both hands while "holding" the light.

HID is the current standard. The downside is cost as they willl cost you anywhere from $500 to $1500 depending on brand, model and size. Burn times are much better and a 10 W HID is more or less comparable to 20 or 30 watt halogen light in terms of apparent brightness. The bulbs in some HID's can be very fragile (drop the light head on a hard surface and the bulb will probably break) while others with automotive style HID bulbs are a little more durable. Given the cost of a new bulb ($110-$140) this can be a serious consideration.

As an example, I get about the same brightness out of an 10 watt HID that I used to get from halogen light with 20 or 30 watt bulbs installed with burn times about 4 times longer from a smaller cannister. But bulbs are about $120 compared to about $4.95.

One other HID quirk is that they take a couple minutes to warm up and a couple minutes to cool down after you shut them off. You should not turn them back on when the bulb is hot, so in effect, you turn the light on at the beginning of the dive and leave it on until the end of the dive. If you need it dark during the dive, cover the lighthead with your hand.

HID lights also put out UV radiation so they should be reserved for in water use where the water can act as a UV filter.

LED lights are the developing technology and offer truly phenomenal burn times and better durability but are currently lacking in brightness.

Color wise both LED and HID lights are very similar with a much more natural light color (that looks bluish white compared to a yellowish tungsten light) that is fairly close to sunlight and gives much more natural looking colors underwater.

 

[made4water]

wow! your post was very informative and is greatly appreciated. Is there one canister light that you could recommend would be most beneficial to the following perameters...

1 Durable (least amount of maintence as posible as well as strong when dropped)
2 bright light with reasonable burn time
3 and of course value for dollar

 

[nereas]

I have a Sartek (Sartek Industries Home Page) HID 21 watt. It turns night (or caves/shipwrecks) into high noon, very nicely. The battery is LIon, and the burn time is 2 hours per re-charge. Current price is $855 not including shipping. Extra batteries run about $100 each. The whole unit is very light weight, maybe only a couple of pounds. A far cry from obsolete alkaline or lead-acid batteries.

 

[PerroneFord]

similar to nereas, I have a Salvo 21w. They are very similar. His is produced in New York (I beleive) and is very popular in the northeast, mine is produced near Gainesville, FL, in cave country. Similar lights, similar performance, different markets.

 

[jimdiverman]

There are some other considerations in choosing a canister light. One is a primary reason the cost can vary greatly for a nominal 21W light of one manufacturer with a 21W of another manufacturer, or even the same manufacturer, and that is the rating on the bulb tells you how many watts the bulb uses when it burns, but the rating on the battery tells you how long it can sustain the nominal rating on the bulb. For instance, say you have a 21W Salvo HID, you can get different amp ratings on the size of the battery which changes the cost, and more significantly to you, changes the amount of burn time you have in the water on your dive. I know Salvo makes several different size batteries to go with the 21W light, for instance, 10.4 Amps. Power is Volts * Amps, also known as a VA rating. So for a 21W bulb, Volts times Amps = 21W. If the battery is 10.4 A, you need to know what current the bulb draws at its nominal voltage. Since Salvo doesn't spec the voltage (I am trying to ascertain this info from them now), I am not sure what the draw is, but I do know for a nominal current rated battery, the higher the nominal current output, the longer a particular the light will burn.

If you are going to get into serious cave diving, you may want to consider the 10W HID as a minimum, and the 21W perhaps. I am seriously considering the 21W HID with the 10.4A battery, but I understand that Salvo will deal on the price. I want to know what that is before I make a final decision. They want about $1300 for this light at retail.

 

[nereas]

... They want about $1300 for this light at retail.

Wow! And I thought my $885 light was expensive! Not even.

 

[made4water]

wow, im pretty new to sb and i have to say each day i come to love it more and more. there are so many people, with so much knowledge to give, from so many dif. backgrounds. and this allows the ready to formulate a greater understanding.... or sometimes shows the reader how ignurent they were to the complexity of the issue. kind of like you guys just made me feel... but dont get me wrong im greatful for the advice. i now know that i have alot of research ahead of me to figure out what i really want.

thanks
Logan

 

[CompuDude]

As much as I love my Salvo 21w HID (with 9ah NiMH battery), I have to admit the price of the equivalent Sartek is pretty impressive:

CBPS4.5LIH21C
21 Watt Focusable HID System, 10.4AH Lithium Ion Battery Pack: MSRP $995.00

I didn't pay full retail on my Salvo, however, and I don't know that I could get the same deal from Sartek, so I would choose the Salvo again in my case, but under $1k retail for a full blown 21w HID system is a very nice deal.

 

[jimdiverman]

CompuDude,

Can you PM me and let me know where you made that deal? Thanks.