Chances are, unless you do a lot of night dives or are an underwater photographer, you haven’t thought that much about the specs of your dive light.
Lots of divers opt for whatever their local dive center recommends or the least expensive option that will satisfy their Night Diver course requirement.
If you’re ready to start shopping and you’re looking for a place to begin your research, Light&Motion wants to shed some light on your options.
Product-wise, their lights are innovative and thoughtfully designed with features like an externally-connected rechargeable Li-ion battery (no flooding and no need to keep buying replacement batteries), and three levels of brightness. Their SOLA line is a platform based on a single streamlined body that is customized for different strengths and applications.
There are SOLA models for photo, video and navigation, as well as a the extra-special Nightsea, which emits blue light to excite the biofluorescent proteins in certain aquatic species. If you haven’t seen the dazzling lightshow of strawberry anemones at night, put it on your bucket list!
But Light&Motion isn’t content to just design and manufacture top-quality lights. They are leaders in upholding industry standards, so confident in the integrity of their products and committed to serving the needs of their customers that they’re calling on their competitors to put their money where their mouths are.
Light&Motion lights are rigorously tested to ensure that they meet the FL1 standard, used for determining how many lumens a light will produce, as well as its burn time and true beam angle.
Unfortunately, consumers may not always be familiar with these measures, or have any way of knowing how their lights are performing. Some lights start out shining brightly, but after a few minutes’ burn time their lumen output drops steeply. Other lights may claim to offer a wide beam angle but don’t account for the distorting effects of water on light, which can lose you up to 30 degrees of beam spread underwater as versus topside.
Light&Motion not only offers informative articles on what these numbers mean, they also publish the results of the lumen test and beam test of each of their lights right on the product page.
These standards are especially important for image-makers, who rely on the performance of their equipment to illuminate subjects and compositions that may only be available for a split second. Being able to understand and depend on your lights can make the difference between a poorly-lit, blurry shot and a dazzling award-winner.
So passionate are they about making sure consumers are getting what they pay for from all light manufacturers, Light&Motion is currently working on a website where light-makers can post the test results of their own products. Customers can use this resource to be sure the lights they buy come from companies that are committed to truth in advertising, and to see how the specs on their top choices compare.
Next time you’re light shopping, check out Light&Motion‘s SOLA line first. After all, they wouldn’t be working so hard to illuminate the industry if they weren’t confident that their products can outshine the rest!
