Which light for recreational night diving?
- Thread starter Barcellos
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Best lights for the money are from diverightin scuba and divegearexpress. The DRIS is $120 and the DGX is $49. Both are LED, super bright and bullet proof. I use them as back ups for my tech dives.
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Damselfish
Contributor
Are you diving in clear tropical water or in murkier waters? That may affect your choice(s) - but as said, it has been discussed a lot.
DogDiver
Contributor
Lights come in all shapes sizes and beam focus. My $1400 primary and two $150 backups are great for cave diving. But I use a hollis three C Cell for recreational nite dives.
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One thing...
Don't get too much light for a night dive. I've got a couple lights that, when turned on, result in critters deciding it's day time and going back inside the reef. Just enough light to see by...
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Don't get too much light for a night dive. I've got a couple lights that, when turned on, result in critters deciding it's day time and going back inside the reef. Just enough light to see by...
Sent from an old fashioned 300 baud acoustic modem by whistling into the handset. Really.
As you can see in the subforum discussions, the selection of lights is very much like the selection of regulators - there are 'levels' of performance and expense, various posters have strong opinions about brand and model based on what they use or have used in the past, and it is hard to answer a question regarding the 'best' light - there are many very good lights out there. You can spend $60 - $130 and get a lot of light functionality. You can also spend less and get something that will make do for the course (look at some of the small Princeton Tec back-up lights). And, if you become enthralled with night diving, you can spend a LOT of money (~$500) and get some great, compact lights.
For recreational night diving I prefer flashlight-style lights, and depending on the situation I prefer either lights small enough to fit into a Goodman handle or a Goodman glove (Big Blue Goodman Handle - Northeast Scuba Supply Store), or lights that allow me to attach a bolt snap to the butt of the light, and clip that to my BP shoulder strap - I keep the light in place in place with a piece of inner tube wrapped around the light head until i want to use it, then release the head (keeping the snap clipped to the harness) and point it where I need light. I find that a small Intova LED works well for that approach (Intovatec ICOM compact waterproof flashlight | Intova). I have also had some good experiences with Big Blue lights with adjustable beams (Big Blue 250 Lumen Adjustable Beam Light - Blue - Northeast Scuba Supply Store).
I stay away from the larger pistol grip lights because they are generally heavier, they tie up my hand when I am using them, or they blind my dive companions and the local marine life when I clip them off and they rotate aimlessly.
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