Wrist Mounted Spotlight

[EMTPDiver]

I was wondering if anyone has any recommendations for good wrist-mounted lights. I was diving with a couple seriously experienced gentlemen this weekend up here in AK and both of these guys had wristlights. They were more powerful than my usual hand-held lamp (which I thought was a pretty good light until I saw these), and freed up their hands to do other things. They also gave off a really pleasant, cool white/blue light instead of my harsh yellow. They were awesome, but I didn't have a chance to ask about them.

Any thoughts/suggestions?

 

[DA Aquamaster]

The cool white/blue light description sounds like an HID (High Intensity Discharge) light. It is closer to the wave lenght of sunlight and not nearly as yellow as halogen light.

But it sounds like their wrist mounted lights were probably also cannister lights. With a cannister light the battery is in a cannister attached to the tank or the waist strap of the BC or harness with a cord running to the light head which is usually carried on the back of the hand with an elastic strap or a metal goodman handle. The advantage of the cannister is the larger battery that can be carried which allows both more wattage and longer burn times. The goodman handle or elastic strap allows virtually hands free operation.

Plus, an HID light of a given wattage gives the impression of a lot more light than a Halogen light of much greater wattage. For example my current 10 watt HID cannister light is comparable to my older 50 watt halogen cannister light.

The burn time on HID lights is also substantially longer on the same battery power so a 10 watt HD cannister light can offer a burn time of 4 to 8 hours depending on the battery size and will give off as much light as a 50 watt halgen cannister light that would provide a burn time of only 60 to 90 minutes per charge.

Most traditional hand held dive lights are in the 3 to 6 watt range with one or two models putting out perhaps 10 watts. Cannister lights on the other hand start at 10 watts and can go as high as 50or 100.

There is however no free lunch and cannister lights and HID lights tend to be pretty expensive. Put the two together and you will be spending serious money for a light - $600 to $1200. Another downside of HID lights s that like sunlight they also put out a lot of UV radiation so they are best used underwater where the water acts as a UV filter. Another downside is that the HID bulbs are very impact sensitive so dropping your lighthead is probably going to cost you about $120 to replace the bulb (the bulbs are also hideously expensive). They also take about a minute to warm up to full brightness and should not be turned off until they are warmed up - at least a couple minutes. Similarly, once you turn one off, it should be cool before restarting so you have to wait 2-4 minutes to turn it back on. Bascially it is a turn it on and leave it on throughout the whole dive kind of thing.

There are several companies that make cannister lights. I own lights sold by DiveRite and OMS, but Salvo, Nite Rider, Halcyon, Greenforce, and Sartec also sell HID cannister lights.

LED technology is also coming along nicely and an LED light offers exceptional burn times (basically measured in days) but so far they are not really challenging HID's in terms of brightness.

 

[Hoosier]

Not necessarily... LED light beam is also whitish/blueish beam.

You might talk about this light: Home

Check out this thread as well.

 

[DA Aquamaster]

LED's are blusish, white but they are not all that bright. The current 1 to 3 watt variety are not really bright enough for use as primary lights and the larger multiple LED lights don't really provide enough focus to provide much pentration. I don't think the observation to the effect that "they were a lot better than mine" would have applied if they were LED lights.

One of the things that makes an HID look so bright is the tight focus and comparatively narrow beam compared to a halogen light. You give up some peripheral light, but what you really notice in most cases is the white hot and very bright center area.

One less expensive cannister light option may be to pick up a fairly inexpensive used halogen cannister light and then over volt the 12 volt bulb to perhaps 16 or 20 volts. You get whiter, brighter light with very little increase in current drain but the trade off is much shorter bulb life (maybe 200-300 hours in the example above.)

There are also a few websites with do it yourself instructions on making your own cannister light but the amount of machine tools and skills needed varies quite a bit with more tolls and skills being needed for lower cost (less prefabricated) light designs.

 

[Gtoph]

Does anyone know of a decent "hands free" light. The only one's I've stumbled across have been this mp-1 thing, and a head strap one from OMS (as I recall). Since the wife is a photo-bug and it's hard to juggle a light and a camera, she's been looking for something that would avoid the juggling.

One that doesn't cost $1000 would be nice as well.

 

[nwbrewer]

LED's are blusish, white but they are not all that bright. The current 1 to 3 watt variety are not really bright enough for use as primary lights and the larger multiple LED lights don't really provide enough focus to provide much pentration. I don't think the observation to the effect that "they were a lot better than mine" would have applied if they were LED lights.

One of the things that makes an HID look so bright is the tight focus and comparatively narrow beam compared to a halogen light. You give up some peripheral light, but what you really notice in most cases is the white hot and very bright center area.

One less expensive cannister light option may be to pick up a fairly inexpensive used halogen cannister light and then over volt the 12 volt bulb to perhaps 16 or 20 volts. You get whiter, brighter light with very little increase in current drain but the trade off is much shorter bulb life (maybe 200-300 hours in the example above.)

There are also a few websites with do it yourself instructions on making your own cannister light but the amount of machine tools and skills needed varies quite a bit with more tolls and skills being needed for lower cost (less prefabricated) light designs.

As one of those who did build my own LED canlight, I'll chime in. Really the only tools you'll need are a router, hacksaw and an electric drill.

The can is 2.25" schedule 40 pvc, the lid is HDPE. The lighthead is made from a D cell maglight.

Originally I used a Halogen MR16 bulb, which was fairly bright, but my burn times weren't what I wanted, so I took the leftover guts form the maglight, and bought a maglight LED conversion bulb.

I get about 3-4 hours of burn time on 6 AA batteries. and it puts out around 150 lumens. Plenty bright enough for a primary in the PNW waters.

The One on the left is the LED primary, the center is a 20watt IR halogen, and the one on the right is a 3watt LED backup.



Jake

 

[Ed Palma]

Jake, that is one nifty project. But are you saying that your cannister contains 6 AA batteries?

Any link or something to this project?

 

[Ed Palma]

Oh, I also found it interesting in the MP-1 home page where they had their model Danielle smiling after her dive... and her hair was completely dry!

 

[MikeRD03]

Hi Aquamaster,

LED's are blusish, white but they are not all that bright. The current 1 to 3 watt variety are not really bright enough for use as primary lights and the larger multiple LED lights don't really provide enough focus to provide much pentration. I don't think the observation to the effect that "they were a lot better than mine" would have applied if they were LED lights.

That´s the comon optinion regarding LED light, but it is far away from what is possible with the modern LED emitters. I know a little about LEDs cause I´m building divelights on my own for a while. The problem is that most diving light manufactures still uses the old technic that is over 2 years old. But LEDs are advancing VERY fast in the moment.

Since I build them on my own I can use the best LED emitter that are availible in the market and I can promise you a LED with the right emitter(s) can beat EVERY HID light up to 35W HID and above.

For example a use a backuplight with the best binned Cree XR-E emitter running on 4W power consumtion. It gives a much better and brighter light in the water than every 20W Halogen mainlamp I have tested so far. Even at land I does the same brightness compared to mid range 20W Halogen light with over 8.000lux at 1m (measured with luxmeter)

On the other hand I have a diving light as a good example for what is possible in the highend range. It is powered by 4 spezial ostar emitters with about 1000 Lumen light each counting up to around 4000 light lumen together. So far I even don´t know about the existance of a HID light delivering 4000 lumen light. And if you think that night must becomes day when used on a night dive - you´re right ;-)

Third point a like to clean up is the light color. You say LED are blueish. You´re right from the point you know so far, but even here LEDs have advanced beyond every HID blub regarding color rending capability. Best emitters have a CRI Index of 80 and above that make them a good choice for foto & video AND they are able to deliver near sunlight like colors underwater despite a halogen blub with it´s yellowish tint. They may be not perfect in the moment, but close enough. ;-)

btw all lamps I spoke about are documented on my hopmepage for any selfmade man that want to build them - so you can check what is said yourself. ;-)

Link: Mike´s Tauchseiten (sorry german ony so far, but babelfish is your friend ;-) )

cheers
MikeRD03

p.s. sorry, if my english was not perfect at all ;-)

 

[DA Aquamaster]

I am staying with the original cool blue/white despription from the original poster. Both HID's and LED's fit that desription - in comparision to a halogen bulbs which are more accurately described as excessively yellow. As a photograpgher, I can assure you that halogen light is a PITA as it requires substantial color correction where as HID and LEd does not. The yellow tinge from a tungsten fialment in whatever gas it is encapsulated in is not an advantage to a photographer.

I also do not disagree with you that LED technology is growing by leaps and bounds - just like HID technology was a few years ago. I even have an LED backup light that in respects other than the very narrow beam, compares well and is in many respects better than my other halogen backup - not something I would have said a year or two ago.

But it does not change the fact that however fast LED technology is growing, it is not what you could call mature yet and of the commerically available choices, HID is still probably your best bet for a serious yet still reasonably affordable primary lcannister ight.