I've been feeling very left behind in the lamp construction race and the pursuit of lumens so I've cobbled something together and give it a test at the weekend. This one also uses ready made components, but it took me a long time to dig them up.

The mounting bracket is a bit heath robinson and I've had to use a lot of gaffa tape; and it gives me a sore neck after a while.

🔗Personal-Album-1-Image-38193[linkphoto]Personal-Album-1-Image-38193[/linkphoto][/link]

Nice!! Makes Miles' super-lamps look like something from the pound-shop...

Nice!! Makes Miles' super-lamps look like something from the pound-shop...

I like the retro design 😉

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Word has it that this new Warmbac (Viper?) lamp runs 3x Q5's in a machined alloy housing of a similar type to the Scurion. Output of 800 lumens or so.

sounds positive :)

825 Lumens?

3 Cree Q5s = 275 lumens each

Um. Most manufacturers of decent lights quote the Q5 at 225 lumens - actually, I think it may be 227.5 which explains some claims of 230, but what's 5 lumens between friends?

So these may be a tad over-driven if these figures are correct?


As has been mentioned elsewhere, the upcoming Fenix HP10 looks interesting - IPX8 waterproof and 225 lumens. The obvious issues are going to be the fact that it uses AA batteries; suspicion about build quality; and that fact that it's not blade-mountable. Horses for courses, I guess.

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The boffins over on ME reckon that to get that out of Q5's they must be driven to high.
Me? No idea. Give me an engine and I can explain that but buggered if I understand electrickery

Aha yes, it seems to be driven at greater than the standard current, which may have a couple of implications:
- battery life will be lower, for a given amount of battery
- it will get hotter and therefore need more heat dissipation

The one thing that everyone seems to overlook is that to get a certain amount of light out, you need a certain amount of battery capacity.

Either you get more light and less runtime; or you get less light and more runtime.

Yes, I know you can use a megalumen headlamp on a low setting, but if you want loopy power every so often, buying something like a Stenlight and a big hand-held torch is going to be a much cheaper way of going about it than splashing £600 on a Scurion!

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Presume this is the lamp?

http://ukcaving.com/board/index.php/topic,8806.msg115241/topicseen.html#msg115241 

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It looks like flimsy lego to me. A Chinese £10 ebay job. :thumbdown:

I wanted my own bright light for video purposes, I decided weight wouldn't be an issue as I'd take young Cameron along to carry it. I mounted 6 50w halogen lamps in an old box with 3 12v lead acid alarm batteries and some wire mesh cut from the seat of a folding chair to protect them.

Works very well but does tend to emit jets of steam after being dropped in deep water.....



[tweak]image link fixed - think i'm going to have to improve the image linking! srl[/tweak]

Looks that way, but none of the apparent suppliers actually have any details about the light on their websites.

It claims to have an output of 825 lumens, seemingly from 3 emitters.

That works out at 275 lumens per emitter (assuming they're all the same). That suggests:
Luxeon K2 @ 1.5A (needs a lot of heatsinking!)
Cree Q5 @?? (not that I've regularly seen them at this output)
Cree XR-E R2 @1A

It would look, therefore, as if there's some pretty ferocious driving going on to achieve that sort of light output - and I'll hazard a guess that the headline figure is based on the emitter output @ driven Amps rather than real world output.

The headpiece looks quite small, so I wonder how long it can cope with the heat?

Similarly, it looks as if the switch is on the battery case, which suggests that the control circuitry might be there as well? Is there some form of overheat protection in the head if that's the case?

To be fair, the headpiece doesn't look a bad bit of kit - the thing which makes me wonder is why it needs to be designed for such a bonkers output (even as something you're not going to use all the time).

Why not just throttle the thing to 400-ish lumens and optimise the design and the optics to that sort of level?

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I wanted my own bright light for video purposes, I decided weight wouldn't be an issue as I'd take young Cameron along to carry it. I mounted 6 50w halogen lamps in an old box with 3 12v lead acid alarm batteries and some wire mesh cut from the seat of a folding chair to protect them.

Now that I wouldn't mind seeing in action!

Works very well but does tend to emit jets of steam after being dropped in deep water.....

😮

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Presume this is the lamp?

http://ukcaving.com/board/index.php/topic,8806.msg115241/topicseen.html#msg115241 

Yeh thats the one.
With many LED lamps, output in lumens seems to be subject to interpretation.
The head itself looks alright but the battery box appears a bit clumsy, will be interesting to see what one looks like in the flesh!

Presume this is the lamp?

http://ukcaving.com/board/index.php/topic,8806.msg115241/topicseen.html#msg115241 

Yeh thats the one.
With many LED lamps, output in lumens seems to be subject to interpretation.
The head itself looks alright but the battery box appears a bit clumsy, will be interesting to see what one looks like in the flesh!

Agreed, guess I'll have to wait until Hidden Earth though.

There is a dedicated web site for it http://www.vipercave.com  although somewhat lacking in tecnhical detail.

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I like the 12v car charger part. Useful when away for a weekend etc.
The battery box is machined aluminium, hopefully better than the Scurion one!
Although there is no bezel at least the lens is recessed a little unlike the Scurion.
It doesn't give endurance times on anything but ultra low power either, nor does it give run times/heat build up, would be interested to know.

There is a dedicated web site for it http://www.vipercave.com  although somewhat lacking in tecnhical detail.

Aha, it seems to be derived from a bike lamp, which does - as happens - make some sense.

It would help if the beam shots had some details of the length of exposure, as they're pretty meaningless without it.

I once got a photograph that made the Tesco 2x AA torch look quite impressive, but it required an 8 second exposure. First attempt with a Fenix at 8 seconds led to a total white-out!

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Now that I wouldn't mind seeing in action!



😮

Some comparison shots in the garage all the same 0.2 second exposure


Oldham


Raptor 2


The video light

Some comparison shots in the garage all the same 0.2 second exposure

Oldham

Raptor 2

Not a lot of difference there!

As for the homebrew monster, well... I'm impressed! 😮

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Some comparison shots in the garage all the same 0.2 second exposure

Oldham

Raptor 2

Not a lot of difference there!

As for the homebrew monster, well... I'm impressed! 😮

To be fair the Raptor is much brighter than the Oldham in use but the difference doesn't show up particularly well over such a short exposure. Anything longer with the video light just whites out though 🙂

Build cost was £12 for the lamps, the rest was scrap hanging round the garage. We have tried it out underground and the weight becomes a pain very quickly. I also put the switch (a large toggle) in a rather awkward place and it kept coming on when we were pushing it through narrow bits and blinding us ::)

If anything it needs to be a little brighter still, the video camera seems to compensate for the contrast between the bright bits and the shadows by darkening everything again :confused:

You can see the results of our efforts here;

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1EvXfcl3ISA 

wow, just watched that, not only good footage, I hope my eldest becomes as good as that lad - he's a game one! :thumbsup:

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