"Primary" vs "Secondary" light?

[tbone1004]

yeah, get two lights, one charger, one set of batteries. Ends up around $130 and you're good to go.

These lights are perfectly sufficient for wreck penetration and actually for cave dives as well, just have to keep track of time. These will certainly function as a primary light for you up until the point that you either need to get a canister for the burn time requirements of technical diving, or you decide you want a crazy amount of light output

 

[rongoodman]

Thanks for all the info. I'm now leaning more towards something like this

Impact Stubby Dive Light - Dive Right in Scuba

plus the goodman style handle

Just be aware that if you get a Goodman handle you can't easily switch to the other hand you're going to have some unhappy dive partners when you need to use that light hand for something else, such as dumping air. The beam will be all over the place, including in their eyes.

 

[Nwcid]

We use goodman handles all the time and have never had that problem. Like any other tool, use it properly.

 

[rongoodman]

I do too, but if I have to do something with my left hand, like reaching for the dump valve, I move the light to the other hand first. No so easily done with some of the elastic or glove set-ups I've seen.

 

[Lorenzoid]

What is the difference, really? (In a recreational context, not technical diving.)
. . .

It seems others have cleared the OP's confusion on this, but I'll take a stab anyway.

The terms "primary light" and "secondary light" (also, and perhaps more commonly, referred to as a "backup light") originate in technical diving, and were never widely used in recreational diving. If they have any meaning in the context of recreational diving, then it's the meaning imported from technical diving: Your primary light is the one you generally use, and if the primary light fails during a dive, you switch to a backup light. For a technical diver, being able to see inside a cave or a wreck is generally critical to a diver's survival. However, it may not be quite as critical for a recreational diver, since the recreational diver can always just call the dive and surface if he has insufficient light. Since light is not quite so critical, it is common for a recreational diver to carry only a single light and not carry a backup light. Of course, carrying a backup light on a recreational dive is still a good idea.

The light manufacturers and dive shops that market lights for technical divers will use these terms with different lights. The ones marketed as suitable as primary lights for technical divers are robust, powerful, and have long burn times. The ones marketed as backup or secondary lights are more compact and will have shorter burn times and are typically less powerful, although with improvements in technology this is not always so. As far as technical specifications, the line between lights marketed as primary and lights marketed as backup is getting fuzzier every day.

Your confusion may stem from the fact that recreational divers often choose to buy lights they intend to use as primaries but which were originally marketed to technical divers as backup lights, since they are often powerful enough and have long enough burn times for recreational use.

For my recreational diving, I carry two identical lights. I guess the one in my hand would be considered the primary, and the one clipped to my BC is my backup.

 

[drrich2]

The ones marketed as backup or secondary lights are more compact and will have shorter burn times and are typically less powerful, although with improvements in technology this is not always so.

This is what I've noticed over time. Some years back, seemed like the 'primary' recreational lights used slightly larger batteries (e.g.: C cells in a Princeton Tec Miniwave LED), and 'backup' lights were smaller, used smaller batteries (e.g.: AAA's) and were easier to stash in a BCD pocket as a 'just in case' backup.

On a recent trip I decided I wanted more power in my primary dive light, and with advances in LED offerings, saw you can get strong lighting in a small package. Hope my new BigBlue CF1100P does the job. It's not tiny, and you can go smaller.

Richard.

 

[outofofficebrb]

On a recent trip I decided I wanted more power in my primary dive light, and with advances in LED offerings, saw you can get strong lighting in a small package. Hope my new BigBlue CF1100P does the job. It's not tiny, and you can go smaller.

Richard.

I have the same light! I love it!