Beam Angles

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I agree with Mbsub. Moving the LED in relation to the reflector does not produce a very nice beam pattern. Either the reflector is designed for spot or flood. It cant do both well.

I also agree about the goodman handle. I would much prefer it to wetsuit material. I can use all my fingers with my goodman handle and its easy on and off with one hand.
 
I was looking at my strobe on my land camera and it uses the focusing method to restrict or widen the beam. So why not design the reflector/optics of a underwater strobe to do the same? Seems it might be less complex and weigh less than two sets of everything. But them I am not an optical engineer by any stretch of the definition!
 
Sounds reasonable.

Yup. Take for instance the Salvo 10w Focusable. I imagine other brands are the same but this is the only one I can comment on from experience. As you adjust for a wider beam, you get this ring around the outside. Kind of annoys me, which is one reason I chose not to get an adjustable head(the MB Sub light is way out of my price range). It's personal preference though.

In the end, I got a used Salvo 12w LED. Very nice light, and a fantastic beam. Not as pencil tipped like their HID's, and it offers a good amount of flood outside the hotspot which I really appreciate while cave diving(I can see more!). However, in caves where the viz gets down to about 30ft or less, the backscatter makes me think my beam isn't as bright as it really is. It's not really annoying, and in the ocean down to 10ft or less of viz I don't notice the back scatter since there is some ambient light.

In a perfect world, I would use the Salvo LED beam for most of my diving, and have the same light with a pencil tipped beam for caves like Peacock 3 or Hole in the Wall.
 
mbsub,

Hmmmm...Can't argue with that answer.

I guess whatever works best for you in the end

Mac
 
I was looking at my strobe on my land camera and it uses the focusing method to restrict or widen the beam. So why not design the reflector/optics of a underwater strobe to do the same? Seems it might be less complex and weigh less than two sets of everything. But them I am not an optical engineer by any stretch of the definition!

Mike,
its possible to get a good beam with changing the focus e.g. between 30 degree and 60 degree.
This is possible because the form of the reflector is nearly the same for both beams.
But we speek about a beam between 6 degree and 30 degree and this is impossible, because the form of the reflector is to different.

Michael
 
https://www.shearwater.com/products/perdix-ai/

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