How much light for night diving?

[Charred]

Wow thank you for all the replies. Lots of information to digest.

A question about gloves - having never used one. Obviously the advantage is you don't have to hold the light but at the same time you can no longer operate it with one hand. You need your second hand to hit the power button.

Just based on my land experience, I think I'd rather hold it and use a lanyard. What am I missing?

 

[deepsea21]

Too much light, not enough light. Having been through several lights that died due to floods, switches breaking, bulbs that died and cost a fortune to replace, my current light is a Princeton Tec Sector 5 LED @ 550 lumens that runs on 4 common C batteries (common C batteries are available about everywhere). What I like about this light (while all LED's are not going to reproduce the same light spectrum as the old Xenon bulbs) is that is offers the best blend I could find for illumination in multiple circumstances... No crazy "hot spot" that can burn a hole through coral at 8' if you know what I mean but a very nice encompassing light that offers great, broad brightness throughout the range I use it for. It will blind you if you stare at the LED and pull the trigger but as the light is diffused and spread out it makes a great light for me and doesn't cost a fortune.

 

[tbone1004]

Wow thank you for all the replies. Lots of information to digest.

A question about gloves - having never used one. Obviously the advantage is you don't have to hold the light but at the same time you can no longer operate it with one hand. You need your second hand to hit the power button.

Just based on my land experience, I think I'd rather hold it and use a lanyard. What am I missing?

You can't use the twistoffs one handed anyway, and the ones with buttons do require two hands, but you don't really cycle through brightness settings that often. That is one disadvantage however, but there is no requirement that you use the glove all the time.
The advantage is you can still use that hand without having to drop the light and you don't have to hold onto something the whole time. This is probably the biggest downfall to the pistol lights aside from how ridiculously heavy they are. It's also more natural to aim flashlights in the water from a goodman handle. If you think about pointing at something, your hand rotates to the right position. To hold a flashlight and move it around while obviously not difficult, is not quite as natural as with a glove.

@deepsea21 a better alternative to that I would still argue is the small handheld video lights. You're going to spend about 2x as much as the PT light you mentioned, but you'll get more light, similar spectrum, the ability to turn it down, hands free use if you want to, they're actually useful at the surface, and are small enough to fit in your pocket. Pros and cons, but the only pro I'm seeing to that PT is that it's $50 cheaper.

 

[DjDiverDan]

Forget about gloves. You aren't allowed to wear them at all in the Cozumel Marine Park, which is where you'll be doing most (all?) of your dives. I have a wrist lanyard for my big light, the small light I keep on one of those spring-loaded retractable lanyards attached to my BC. I strongly suggest attaching lights, cameras, strobes, whatever to a lanyard, whether attached firmly to BC or to your wrist; I don't even trust the pocket on my BC, even though it has a velcro close. Don't be one of the crowd who has to post "Lost GoPro on Palancar Gardens".

 

[kelemvor]

@sinistar why would you recommend the C4?
C4 is $90 and requires C cells which aren't cheap. Also pistol grip which I think is stupid, but that's just me. So same price as what we are talking about, but very heavy, and inconvenient to use. You also shouldn't run these above the surface because they don't dissipate heat well and with only on/off function, you don't get much use there.
Your talking about a $120 investment/diver plus cost of batteries, so $240, or you spend $350 and get a much more versatile system adding the functionality of multiple brightness settings, huge weight savings, easier to use due to goodman vs pistol grip, and ones that are really nice to use on land.
the PT light you linked is fine, but for that brightness output and cost, I'd get the DGX Mini in a heartbeat

Not saying I like the C4 but IMO a light that takes standard batteries (C, D, AA, AAA) is very desirable. Most that I have had (several cheapo ebay lights, and my Diverite BX1's will take either AAA's or 18650. I could use disposable or rechargeable AAA's or I can use a rechargeable 18650. I use the 18650 most of the time, but I keep AAA's in my bag just in case I need them. I've had to use the AAA's a few times. Being stuck with a non replaceable rechargeable battery (for example my hog morph 1000) is the worst scenario imo. I've also got a DRIS 1k that uses C cell batteries. Rechargable or Disposable - I usually use disposable.

You know what drives me nuts? Modern can lights. The packs are so much smaller than the packs for old HID lights. I wish manufacturers would offer modern packs that have the dimensions of old packs for awesome run-times on extremely bright lights (I'm thinking 10k+ lumen range). I've got a DIY project I'm working on involving a 10k lumen LED. I'm trying to talk my LDS down on an old can light he's got for sale so I can use the canister from it, replacing the innards of course.

 

[tbone1004]

@kelemvor most if not all of these lights will accept the AAA holders btw, though with 18650 chargers charging from a cigarette outlet or a walll, I still prefer the 18650's.

regarding the canisters. how much burn time do you want? There's two factors that are going into modern canister sizes. The first and foremost is cost. The batteries aren't cheap, especially if you want to fly with them, the cost of getting packs UN tested is $5k-$10k and that kills a lot of custom battery packs these days. Second is the flight requirements to keep the packs under a certain size. UWLD has 75min burn time on their 10k lumen light, and unlike most manufacturers *especially Big Blue*, you'll actually get the full 10k for that full 75 minutes. They have to use smaller cells to keep the individual packs under the limit for airline travel. Light Monkey uses a loophole for their big packs and it has cost some people their lights at airports already because TSA didn't buy it. You could go to NiMH but then you double your size and don't have any cost savings over lithium/wh so the packs then have to get REALLY big.

If you want a commercial pack, then ask if UWLD would make you a bigger pack than what they have. It's pretty simple for them to just mill a longer canister tube, and there are 3 54wh packs in the big ones, so just go by multiples of three. It will get rather long, and it already is rather long, but that's a solution for commercial packs. Otherwise your best route is to ask batteryspace to make you a custom prototype pack that fits within the dimensions of whatever canister you end up getting

 

[ggunn]

This is probably the biggest downfall to the pistol lights aside from how ridiculously heavy they are.

FWIW, my old 4D UK pistol grip light is virtually neutral in the water. It also survived a major flooding event because it has no electronics inside, just a switch and some wires.

 

[tbone1004]

FWIW, my old 4D UK pistol grip light is virtually neutral in the water. It also survived a major flooding event because it has no electronics inside, just a switch and some wires.

doesn't change the fact that they are almost 3lbs on land which is a lot for that kind of light when you are flying. They xenons also appear to be discontinued per the manufacturer for the reason below

The xenon lights can take a flood, but you pay a massive penalty for it. They produce 350 lumen and take 13w to do it. Efficiency there is 27lumen/watt. If you are will to accept the risk of them being shorted if you flood, which these new lights are much less prone to do, you can an increase in efficiency to over 100 lumen per watt.

 

[ggunn]

doesn't change the fact that they are almost 3lbs on land which is a lot for that kind of light when you are flying.

It weighs practically nothing with no batteries in it.

 

[scubadada]

I use the UK C4 LED as a primary light at night. Plenty of light, good battery life, lasts for a whole trip. I have an Intova back up