First primary canister light

[scuba_mc]

Hi

I'm looking for my first canister light and wanted something that can be focused to a narrow beam for signalling or widened for video or just plain illumination on night dives etc.

I've seen the Halcyon Focus but that is out of my prices range.

Anything similar but a little more affordable?

Thanks
Martin

 

[Dive Right In Scuba 2]

What is your preferred price range? Desired brightness? Burn time?

 

[scuba_mc]

$800 is my budget
Burn time - 4 hours would be plenty
Brightness - Not sure how to quantify this, sorry bit of a noob in this area - Maybe the two inputs about will narrow this down for me anyway.

I like the idea of a focusable beam as the torch will be used for rec and entry level tech diving.

 

[tbone1004]

not going to happen on a new budget, if you want focus the Halcyon light or the older focusable HID's are your only option. No primary canister is going to do video exceptionally well without a hotspot, you're better off getting a 1k lumen backup light with a video head.

The other option is to get something like the Hog Morph 1000 and a Morph backup light. Get one with video, one with spot head, and you can swap them back and forth as needed. About $650 for them now unless Mike puts them on his Black Friday sale, which is very likely. $500 for the Core system, then about $150 for the backup. Gets you one of the backups needed for your tech training, is perfectly usable as a primary for recreational diving, and you can put the spot on that one for signalling and the video head on the core system for extra battery life.

If you can stretch a little but, the UWLD-15 is about a grand and is a badass light that will have somewhat of a hotspot, but will be the last light you need for tech. Not necessarily the last one you want, because the LD-35 is the big boy, but it's the last one you need. FWIW I prefer the 15 to the 35, because I just run the 35 on low in most caves *only borrowed the 35 from a buddy a few different times, it's nice just a bit excessive on high*.

The DRIS website is mostly broken right now otherwise I'd link you to stuff directly, but I would recommend buying from DRiS, great support and a great selection, not to mention the crazy prices they're going to have in a few days...

 

[victorzamora]

The Hog Morph is actually a very impressive little canister light, and the ability to use either head is really awesome. I'm pretty sure they sell a splitter to run both, which is actually better for video.

Stay away from buying HID right now, LED is really the way of the future.

As tbone said, my REAL recommendation is to save a few pennies and get the UWLD light....you won't regret it. I'm the buddy who loaned him the UWLD-35, and it certainly is nearly too much light.......nearly . Besides light output, the form factor, quality, and support for UWLD lights are unparalleled.

Light Monkey is another fantastic company, and while they have lights in your price range they don't compete with the UWLD lights (in my opinion). To compete with the UWLD offerings, you'd have to spend more on other brands. The UWLD-15 is about the same amount of light as the LM 26W LED, which is a few hundred bucks more. The LM 12W LED is right at the top of your price range and puts out half the light the UWLD-15 does.

---------- Post added November 24th, 2014 at 04:32 PM ----------

Cave Adventurers - Underwater Light Dude 1500 Lumen Primary Light LD15-96-TM - Marianna, Florida USA - Never Undersold!

---------- Post added November 24th, 2014 at 04:47 PM ----------

Sorry, it's not a splitter...it's two ports on the canister. Regardless, it allows you to run two light heads off of one canister which is optimal for video. Flood gives you a nice background light so it's not all black around your spotlight, and your spot head gives a nice amount of light on whatever you're focusing on. Videos without both RARELY look as good (in my opinion) at night or in caves. In the day time, it really depends on distance from the subject (in my opinion).

UWLDs and Hogs have variable brightness settings, so you can turn it down on a night dive in clear water.

 

[Kevrumbo]

The practical advantage for a cordless Primary Light is for the Wreck Diver running a lot of penetration reel line: again no hip mounted canister cord to get entangled or fouled with reel line -or worse- along with trapping the Primary Reg Hose if you have to donate to a teammate while running line. The disadvantage is that it's easier to accidentally drop/fumble a cordless light and lose it to the abyss because there is obviously no tethering power cord like in a conventional hip mounted canister light.

One of the configurations I used in Truk for the past two weeks -especially on sidemount dives- was the cordless Viz35 Primary Light; and a wet pluggable E/O corded battery canister (UTD's small profile Power-Z model) mounted on back waistbelt and initially powering a wetsuit torso heater as needed (UTD's Solar Heater), but also capable of plugging into a redundant or auxiliary Primary E/O corded small Vision 18W head stored as back-up in pocket shorts.

For instance if I lost the cordless Viz35 Primary (light failure or "fumbled" it), I would turn-on one of my conventionally mounted shoulder harness back-up lights, disconnect the power cord to the wetsuit heater and plug it into the Vision 18W light head retrieved from my pocket shorts. The practical advantage in this contingency is that I would still have the option to continue the wreck penetration or abort with much better illumination than a standard shoulder harness mounted redundant/back-up light alone. . .

 

[tbone1004]

you've got issues if you get a light cord fouled with line from a reel..... E/O is quite nice, but definitely out of budget. The HOG Morph 1000 is probably the best option for this guy, especially since it already is set up for 2 light outputs from the can for video usage.