Light Cannon vs Sola 800

[scuba_frog]

I have been using the UK Light Cannon HID for a while and the switch crapped out on me. Been looking at replacing it with the Sola 800. The newer Light Cannon eLED is rated at 825 lumens and the Sola on spot is rated at 500 (800 flood). For night dives, I dive fairly low vis conditions and probably would not use the flood too often. Has anyone seen a comparison between these two lights or had any personal experience with both of these? I am not sure if 325 less lumens is a significant number or if lumens can even be "rated" accurately. Is that really an almost 40% reduction in brightness? Thanks for your help.

 

[DazedAndConfuzed]

To have a perceivable difference in brightness, you usually have to have double the lumens. Of course, angle of coverage is very important, since a torch with 5 deg spot will have 4x the brightness of one with 10 deg beam, given the same lumen.