Nocturnal Lights and my L&M StingrayIII Sport

[thereefgeek]

I got my order last week from Nocturnal Lights and wanted to thank NLI Tim for all his help over the phone in chosing the right setup as well as the correct color bulbs and diffusers. I decided on the TL50 twin light set up with the 4700K bulbs and spot diffusers. The whole thing arrived on my doorstep in a nice little padded carrying case and all the parts were present and accounted for. It even comes with a two-pin adaptor on the multi-volt charger for overseas style electrical outlets.

The StingrayIII housing already comes with 3/4" diameter "Loc-Line" brand male sockets mounted on the handles, and I had some extra lengths lying around from a fish tank project (and the wifes strobe arm), so I ordered the rest of what I needed from www.modularhose.com and picked up a few stainless steel bolts, nuts and washers from Home Depot while I waited for the Loc-line parts to be delivered. Once I had what I needed, it took all of 10 minutes to put it together.

You can see in the closeup the flat-base male ball and the female X female coupler. Two 1" ss bolts with lock and flat washers and nylon locking nuts are used to fasten the flat base male ball to the light heads.

A little trick I used on my wife's Sea&Sea DX arm with the YS-90 strobe was to shove some 3/4" o.d. (1/2" i.d.) vinyl tubing up the Loc-Line to give it a little more support for such a heavy strobe. While diving with a borrowed Sea&Sea LX55 video light last year, the battery was so heavy inside the light that it kept wanting to fall over. The TL50 heads are pretty light with the remote battery pack, but it still helps hold them in position for filming.

Here they are all mounted to the housing, and the cool thing about Loc-Line (besides the ability to infinately position the lights) is if the arms are too long or too short just pop it apart and add or subtract segments. Most good aquarium stores also usually have it in stock and it comes in sizes from 1/4" - 3/4" diameter. You can also order it in blue, gray and orange if you like.

Two weeks and counting until I get to try them out diving in the Philippines, and I can't wait!! Again a big thanks to Tim at www.nocturnallights.com and don't forget to use your scubaboard 15% discount coupon code.

 

[tribaltim]

I agree thereefgeek NLT Tim also helped me out with my Nocturnal light and I'm over here in Okinawa, Japan. Great customer service!

 

[Nocturnal Lights]

Thanks guys

Do you mind if I post some of these pictures on our website?

 

[thereefgeek]

Absolutely Tim, I can even e-mail you the original pics instead of using the compressed versions in my gallery and I can Photoshop out the time/date stamp (forgot to turn it off in the camera). I'll also get some pics up with the other Loc-Line elbow I'm thinking about using.

 

[Shasta_man]

<<LocLine>> so that's what that stuff is. Thanks for the informative message.

 

[Nocturnal Lights]

thereefgeek,

Are you back from your dive trip yet? if so let me know how the trip was

 

[JamesD]

A little trick I used on my wife's Sea&Sea DX arm with the YS-90 strobe was to shove some 3/4" o.d. (1/2" i.d.) vinyl tubing up the Loc-Line to give it a little more support for such a heavy strobe. While diving with a borrowed Sea&Sea LX55 video light last year, the battery was so heavy inside the light that it kept wanting to fall over. The TL50 heads are pretty light with the remote battery pack, but it still helps hold them in position for filming.

Great trick, thanks for noting that, persuaded me to try some of the locline stuff rather than the cost of arms (scuba arms seem very expensive, or is that just me?)

 

[thereefgeek]

Got back just before Thanksgiving and the trip was fantastic! We spent 8 days at Atlantis Puerta Gallera and 7 at Atlantis Dumaguete: http://www.atlantishotel.com/index.htm

This is the second time in P.G. and we added the week in Dumaguete for this years vacation. The diving was great at both resorts, but quite a difference in the vis and animals we saw. P.G. was land based short boat rides and 4 dives per day, Duma was 3 longer (75 minute) dives per day and the trips were boat based mostly to the surrounding islands (1 hr. trips out and back, 3 tanks & a lunch), although the house reefs were some of the best for shooting macro. If you ever get a chance to visit, the diving is great, the locals are friendly and the resorts (esp. Dumaguete) are very comfortable. The divemasters and boat operators are very helpful with camera and dive equipment and tailor the dive plans to fit your skill level and what types of animals you'd like to photograph. The 4 dives a day and optional night dives, along with the hour+ bottom times make Nitrox certification a must (which they'll gladly fill for a small fee)

Now for the report on Nocturnal Lights:
Overall I'm thrilled at the results. As noted above, I purchased the TL-50 Twin Beam with 4700K 60 degree beam angle bulbs and diffusers. NLI Tim sent me some extra bulbs in other wattages (20 watt) and colors (3800K) to try out, but I must say that colorwise the 4700K are the ticket for video. The 38's tend to be a little more yellow than the 47's.

As for the wattage of bulbs I used, in almost every instance I was running the 20 watt bulbs. The 50's are nice an bright, but almost too bright in all but the shallowest of dives. The battery pack will power the 50 watt twin bulbs for about an hour and of course if I wasn't recording, the lights were off. At best, shooting maybe 15 minutes of tape per dive, getting 3 dives out of a re-charge was tough with the 50 watt bulbs and they had tendency to wash out the the colors on very close shots. The 20 watt bulbs seemed to throw more than enough light and were primarily the bulbs I used.

On those long day trips to the outer islands with no AC voltage available on the boat to recharge between dives, the TL-50 battery pack had more than enough juice for 4, or even 5 dives with the 20 watt bulbs. When I wasn't filming I'd use them as a focusing light for my wife who was shooting digital stills. The TL-50 Twins come with a 4 hour multi-volt quick charger and a couple times I had to give a quick boost on our land based surface intervals, but mostly I'd just burn them conservatively for 3-4 dives and hit them with an over night charge at the end of the dive day.

The lamp heads (as pictured in the banner to the left) don't come with diffusers, and for video they're almost a must have. The intense white hot spot is nicely soffened and evenly spread across the shot. I always shot with the diffusers in place and got the best results with the 60 degree angle bulbs. Lamp head positioning was pretty critical and I usually had the arms bent into an upsidedown "U" with the heads located very close to either side of the front port. Slight adjustments to where the beams intersected were quite easily acomplished one handed from there and varied from shot to shot.

Overall Rating:
For the money, these lights are a great value. When the other videographers using HID lights were killing their batteries, I had power to spare. The construction is rugged and I expect them to last for years to come. The bulbs themselves are very inexpensive compared to the replacement HID's so it's easy to keep plenty of spares in different colors and wattages on hand. The design is simple and the O-rings were very reliable with minimum maintainance needed between dives.

My only complaint would be that the battery pack was a little cumbersome at times. I still haven't found a good way to attach it to the housing I'm using so I dove with it clipped to my BC strap. This made it a bit awkward getting it clipped on after the whole rig (lights, battery and housing) was handed down to me once I got in the water, but after 35 dives I became quite proficient at this minor task. I subtracted 2 lbs. from my weights to compensate for the heavy battery pack and probably was still a bit overweighted, but on the same note that heavy battery pack was what let me keep filming when my HID buddies were swimming around with dead batteries.

All things considered I'd have to give these lights a 9.5 out of 10, and a big thumbs up to Nocturnal Lights Inc. for their help and customer support. I'm still trying to figure out a way to hook the battery to the housing. Thanks again Tim.

 

[Nocturnal Lights]

reefgeek,

It's my pleasure and thank you for the detailed review! If the 50w lights are too bright for you, you or your dive buddies can consider the TL20 Twin Beam, which offers a 1 hour burntime with two 20w lightheads. The battery pack is a lot compact but you probably won't be able to get more than 2-3 shots if the places where you're shooting do not offer a place to charge your battery. Anyhow, I'm glad that you enjoyed using our products and if you need anything else in the future you know where to find me. Also, let me know if you are going to post any of the video clips up, I'd be interested in seeing them

 

[ronrosa]

I have halogen lights too, although not by Nocturnal. The HID guys like to talk about their long burn times vs halogen, but what they don't mention is halogen lights can be instantly turned on/off as needed while HID lights are typically on for the whole dive.

Video lights are a funny topic. For some reason there is a lot of trash talking on the different technologies, HID, halogen and flourescent. I guess it's similar to cars. Ferrari, Corvette, Mustang........Lexus, Toyota, Scion.

Reefgeek, can you post some clips ?