New LED UK light!

[archman]

Ha ha, I wonder if they'll make a retrofit for the Light Cannon...

 

[drbill]

I wonder if anyone has used these new UK eLed lights for underwater videography? The HID's I've tried are too bright for the uses I'd want to apply them for but maybe the eLed at 6w would work???

Dr. Bill

 

[Mark Vlahos]

I wonder if anyone has used these new UK eLed lights for underwater videography? The HID's I've tried are too bright for the uses I'd want to apply them for but maybe the eLed at 6w would work???

Dr. Bill

I have a 4 cell version of the light on order, as my UK1200 recently died a horrible acidic death.

I work in the theatre as a lighting technician and we are starting to have LED fixtures gain acceptance in our industry. One of the major problems is color rendition, there are lots of technical things going on but when I attended a seminar on LED fixtures it was explained in considerable detail.

I will attempt to generalize the problem... White light from an incandescent source is made up of most of the colors of the rainbow (and lots more out of the visible spectrum), when this light strikes an object some colors are absorbed by the object and other colors are reflected. This explains why some things are red and other things are blue. Some of the light is absorbed while some is reflected.

A "White" LED does NOT contain all of the colors in the rainbow, instead it contains some (or perhaps many) spikes of color that together appear to be white to your eye. When this light strikes a particular object that we know to be red, if the light does not contain very much light energy on the proper wavelengths there is not as much (or perhaps any) of the red light to properly illuminate the red object. If this happens then the red object will most likely appear to be a muddy brown or somthing similar. It is roughtly similar to somthing we are all familiar with, namely, the fact that at depth red light is filtered out by the water, we can still see the object but it does not look bright red until we shine a light on it.

For a really interesting experiment, if you own any LED flashlight (underwater or not). Go to your local paint store or the paint department at your local hardware store and look at a large sampling of paint chips under sunlight, then look at those same color chips in a darkened area with your LED flashlight being the main source of illumination. You will be amazed some of the colors just simply go away! Due to the nature of the LED the colors may not be the ones you expect, you will notice that some colors that under sunlight are very similar under LED are very different. I work with light and color every day and I was shocked, in my business the narrow range of color rendition can be useful as a tool, for general illumination for video it would present more of a problem.

For my purposes the LED light will probably be fine for what I want it to do, I will still carry an incandescent light and I will use it to look at all the pretty colors, but for general illumination the LED will fit the bill. The manufacturers of LEDs are making a great deal of progress in this area, but the problems of video and color rendition lead me to the conclusion that at this time any LED fixture and video would not be a good blending of technology, especially underwater where the light from the sun will most certainly have some of the color spectrum filtered out.

Mark Vlahos

 

[diver_paula]

I have a 4 cell version of the light on order, as my UK1200 recently died a horrible acidic death.

I work in the theatre as a lighting technician and we are starting to have LED fixtures gain acceptance in our industry. One of the major problems is color rendition, there are lots of technical things going on but when I attended a seminar on LED fixtures it was explained in considerable detail.

I will attempt to generalize the problem... White light from an incandescent source is made up of most of the colors of the rainbow (and lots more out of the visible spectrum), when this light strikes an object some colors are absorbed by the object and other colors are reflected. This explains why some things are red and other things are blue. Some of the light is absorbed while some is reflected.

A "White" LED does NOT contain all of the colors in the rainbow, instead it contains some (or perhaps many) spikes of color that together appear to be white to your eye. When this light strikes a particular object that we know to be red, if the light does not contain very much light energy on the proper wavelengths there is not as much (or perhaps any) of the red light to properly illuminate the red object. If this happens then the red object will most likely appear to be a muddy brown or somthing similar. It is roughtly similar to somthing we are all familiar with, namely, the fact that at depth red light is filtered out by the water, we can still see the object but it does not look bright red until we shine a light on it.

For a really interesting experiment, if you own any LED flashlight (underwater or not). Go to your local paint store or the paint department at your local hardware store and look at a large sampling of paint chips under sunlight, then look at those same color chips in a darkened area with your LED flashlight being the main source of illumination. You will be amazed some of the colors just simply go away! Due to the nature of the LED the colors may not be the ones you expect, you will notice that some colors that under sunlight are very similar under LED are very different. I work with light and color every day and I was shocked, in my business the narrow range of color rendition can be useful as a tool, for general illumination for video it would present more of a problem.

For my purposes the LED light will probably be fine for what I want it to do, I will still carry an incandescent light and I will use it to look at all the pretty colors, but for general illumination the LED will fit the bill. The manufacturers of LEDs are making a great deal of progress in this area, but the problems of video and color rendition lead me to the conclusion that at this time any LED fixture and video would not be a good blending of technology, especially underwater where the light from the sun will most certainly have some of the color spectrum filtered out.

Mark Vlahos

Mark,

Thank you - very informative.

Paula

 

[ScottyK]

Here's a link to a (somewhat sketchy, but positive) review.

http://www.sportdiver.com/article_content.jsp?ID=32849

Leisure Pro has the upgrade kit listed at $49 for the C4 or C8. According to them, they will be available for shipping in about a month.

I'm going to order a pair and post a review. The pea soup I normally dive in should be a good test for them

BTW- I also got to look at Dive Rites new LED backup light at the Beneath The Sea expo this weekend. It's nice and compact, and gave off a strong white light for it's size. It's of course, hard to tell until you get one in the water. The rep claimed a 9 hour burn time on 6 (8?) AA batteries.

Scott

 

[Otter]

I wonder if anyone has used these new UK eLed lights for underwater videography? The HID's I've tried are too bright for the uses I'd want to apply them for but maybe the eLed at 6w would work???

Dr. Bill

I have the C8 model and have been able to only dive with in once. Viz was garbage and it was during the day, so I didn't feel like I gave it a good test. In a dark room, it looked reasonable. It has a nice white light, but clearly not as bright as the HID. Like the standard C8, it has two on positions, however, instead of activating a backup filament, it controls the brightness.

I am open to suggestions on how to conduct a less subjective comparison.

My current plans are to try two of the eLED lights as an alternative to my current light for my Mako. I will require some modifications, but shouldn't be extensive.

 

[Scubamedicjoe]

We expect a FULL report when you've had a chance to get into the water with it.

UK is our choice for u/w lights & it would be nice to see them improve upon an already stellar product line. IMHO, of course.
__________________
~SubMariner~
No matter where you go, there you are
then tell them to improve in the D-8 and make it a great lead upgrade too instead just rechargable lol

 

[d33ps1x]

Ha ha, I wonder if they'll make a retrofit for the Light Cannon...

Considering that minus the focusable reflector the light cannon uses the exact same bulb as th halcyon 10 watt HID light I doubt it.

But since I have a Helios 9 with the 10 watt head please do send all your out of date HID bulbs to me when you upgrade your light cannons!

Gracias

;-)

 

[crpntr133]

Unless it has some interesting new lense to focus the beam I think you will find it lacking as most LED lights seem to be. Depends on the use though

I have a Tektite Expedition 1900 19 LED backup light that I use along with a scout for backups. It lasts forever but it is a washout compared with the scout and useless for signalling.

Aren't they also focusing the light back into the reflector? In other words, they turned the LED around. I might be thinking of some other.

Please keep us posted. I just bought a used C8.

 

[illumiGeek]

The C4/C8 eLED uses a Lumileds Luxeon 5W LED, and let me tell you, this is not your mammas LED. The Luxeons totally blow away the puny 5mm LEDs you are used to.

Now I have not seen the new UK 5W lights, but I have seen, used and modded lights with Luxeon LEDs. The 1W is very bright for an LED, but not overly impressive compared to halogen or xenon conventional lights.

The 3W and 5W versions are very impressive. If UK did a proper job of heat sinking and powering the 5 watter, it should blow away any incandescent up to twice the wattage (maybe 3 times). Will it knock your socks off if you're used to HID? No, but you will still like it due to its very HID-like white light.

I have seen the UK 4AA eLED 1W version, and it is not heat sinked very well, and is very under driven. Not impressively bright, but long, long battery life. Hopefully they did a better job with the 5W version...

One quirk with the Luxeon LEDs is that there is some color variance in the manufacturing process, so "white" can be a relative term. There are often tints of blue, green, pink, etc. and you have no control over what you get when purchasing a manufactured product (this is what we call the "Luxeon lottery"). The tints are usually not too bad (they are always much whiter than halogen or xenon), but some find them objectionable.

I have a 1 watter that I use in my PT Aqua Flare, and with the glow cone off it produces a very white hot spot that fades to pink and purple at the edge, and then there is a diffuse faintly yellow surrounding halo. Quite colorful for a "white" LED. I have another 1W that I run in my PT40 sometimes, and that is pure white.

I'm torn between ordering the C4 upgrade kit, and building my own mod. I'll probably order the kit. I used to enjoy building and modifying things... guess I'm getting lazy in my old age.

Aloha, iG