How often do you change your batteries?

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slimrn

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I have had the pleasure of a light dimming to the point of uselessness on a night dive. I just linked arms with my dive buddy (wife) and enjoyed what she wanted to look at. It was a boat dive in Cozumel, great viz, well supported- no big deal. We have a live aboard coming up in November to Belize- lots of night dives (and I now own a backup just in case.) I was wondering, I you are doing frequent night dives like on a live aboard- how often are you changing batteries? Before each dive? I own a DRIS 1k (not the shorty) and a [FONT=Arial, sans-serif]Intova IFL-WA-ZOOM (this was the one that lost power.) FWIW i did a search and couldn't find anything relevant. Thanks in advance.[/FONT]
 
I use AA for all my things (strobes, camera, lights (with adapter if needed), and I have probably 50% more batteries than needed, almost all are eneloop, and whatever that are not being used for that dive, are being charged or in the charger. For the cameras that doesn't use AA, I have spare batteries for them. On liveaboards, I use 3 sets of AA chargers (plus the non-std battery charger) and they are all very busy.

Batteries in my lights are fully charged at all time, if I use it somewhat in daytime dives, I make sure that new ones goes in before the night dive. I rarely use the backup lights, so they get 2nd tier rechargeable and don't get swapped out. In worse case scenarios (such as batteries all die in strobes, cameras and light, and have to be on a night dive), I might take those batteries out and put it in my primary light.

For clear water night dives, it is better off to get a wider dispersion light which will light up a bigger area, it will act like a flood light when you are searching for any sign of critters...point in one general arear and let your eye detect movements. The narrow beam of most common lights will just light up a narrow region and you will have to scan your light back and forth alot more in search of the critters.
 
OP, are you using rechargeable batteries?
I do, and I change them before every day of diving, and depending on the use and duration sometimes between dives. Never had a primary light failure.
 
I am not at this point. Alkaline batteries so far. Thanks to all for great info on your practices!
 
These lights aren't AA, the DRIS is 3 x C batteries and the Intovatec is 2 x CR123 batteries. Are they still candidates for rechargeables?
 
depends upon your light & battery. We swapped in new batteries on our old school RCD8 every dive trip, even if not required. They still had lots of power after 7 hours of bottom time. We just did not want to carry the batteries home. 16 D cells are heavy.

We have now moved to new LED based lights that will require a battery swap after every night dive. These are based on 18650 rechargeables and at highest power level they run less than an hour, over 2 hours on lowest level. So with each night dive being at least 60 minutes, I will swap the battery every dive.

Swap when ever you need to based upon your knowledge of your specific light / battery burn time. Not all batteries are equal. Many rechargeable batteries are "optimistically" labeled. You can determine the burn time yourself. Pop in a fresh battery and turn the light on (i put them in a full sink). come back every 15 minutes. This is easy to do at home ahead of time so that you do not get any underwater surprises.
 

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