Zebralight H600W headlamp video review from inside a lava tube

[Mooreshire]

I'm not the best at these reviews, forgive me. Also I'm quite biased as this is both the brightest single diode lamp I've owned, the most compact useful headlamp I've owned, and the first 18650 light I've owned. Subtitled for the benefit of ESL viewers and to combat the fact that I accidentally left my lapel mic topside.

[thaugen]

Great real life review! I really like my H600w as well. Thanks!

[kevinm]

Okay, now I'm excited to see the Kavelight video!

Nice work

[louie]

Is that in Ape cave?

[d1337]

Great review! I've been using EagleTac Protected 18650 3100 batteries and I really like the batteries and the light. You didn't mention the runtimes. The runtime on medium is one of my favorite things about this light. Thanks for the unique review.

[Mooreshire]

Thanks everyone! I also love the shape when not on my head - fits unobtrusively in my fist while I'm crawling through a squeeze passage. I am worried that if I bash my helmet off the ceiling in just the wrong way I'll tear the rubber headband holder. I am also noticing that the elastic strap is starting to fray and lose stretch around the edges already too, but no elastic band has yet proven itself cave-worthy in my eyes and I'll likely replace it with static webbing and a small metal buckle for helmet use and reserve the elastic for hiking trips and household use. I like that rapid clicking right out of OFF cycles down from high, which makes it easy to quickly double click into medium mode if I don't want to hold my finger down for the second it takes to cycle through low into medium. Also glad the strobe, etc. are so well hidden.

You didn't mention the runtimes. The runtime on medium is one of my favorite things about this light.

That was because I poorly selected my first 18650 batteries - the inexpensive TrustFire 3000mAh cells I foolishly bought cut out after a few seconds of TURBO mode, which is why I only show TURBO off briefly in the video. Also I don't know what the actual current ratings are - anyone know what the driver is pushing for the different modes? I bet if I hadn't gone to an underfunded public school I'd be pulling out a multimeter and confidently checking for myself.

Is that in Ape cave?

Nope; it's another of the many "wild" tubes along the same Cave Basalt Lava Flow as Ape Cave, and formed during the same eruption event (1800 years ago or so). I happen to be the trip coordinator for the Cascade Grotto here in Seattle, in case you've any interest in joining us sometime. We have alpine marble caves nearby too, which are rare and harder to get to and regularly require rope skills/gear.

[lisantica]

Enjoyed your video.
I like black label AW Li-on batteries with IC Protection.

[zfmrchnt1]

Thank you for taking the time to make this great review. Being to see first hand how this light looks within the environment is as helpful as it gets when making an informed decision.

[spelunkik]

Some video using an HD camera in my backyard: http://youtu.be/DV52MkwpA6Y

Some video using a standard point-and-shoot camera in a local cave using the 361 lumen setting (the point and shoot does not do as well in low light conditions): http://youtu.be/mVp8SZsjPhQ

[Mooreshire]

Very cool, Spelunkik! I was born in PA. My father is pushing 80 years old and still active with the Nittany Grotto. :-D Made me nostalgic for the caves I grew up exploring.

[eh4]

Good video!
Make one that's just plain scrabbling along with whatever your preferred illumination level is, that would be great. -With practical momentary turbo applications!

[Changchung]

Nice video, I like the disco light in your helmet, about the batteries. Check my video, not in english but you can see the multmeter and the batteries what I test with the light

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ideKU...e_gdata_player


SFMI4UT

[spelunkik]

Here's a video I took today using my H600w and a Flip UltraHD. The camera could have been angled better, but overall it was okay. I used the 361 lumen setting the whole time, with a couple of instances where I kicked it up to turbo for good measure. This light is definitely bright enough for video... if you have a camera that does okay in low light conditions.

[Mooreshire]

Loving the videos and the feedback and the enthusiasm for new lighting technology in extreme places. Thanks everyone for the complements!

This will be starting to get off topic, so I'll try to be brief and relevant.

Beam shots are very difficult to take in any way that is truly useful to the viewer; still photos are hard enough but when you're taking between thirty and sixty of them every second things get pretty complicated. Looking at the relative brightness of some pixels on a screen can only portray the relative brightness of the actual event so well, and perfecting the accuracy is a science.

When I film in extreme conditions like a cave I use a Panasonic HDC-SD1 which utilizes three 1/4 inch CCD chips to create a digital rendering of the light collected by its (quality glass) fixed primary lens as well as any secondary lenses I attach, or I use a ContourHD helmet camera which has only a single 1/4" CMOS sensor and has only one fixed wide-angle lens to work with. Some cameras can utilize the finest lenses, and collect telescopic quantities of light onto their very large sensors - but I think I did the best I could with the money I had when selecting my video gear.

The surface area of the sensor(s) and the amount of collecting power a lens has is only part of the equation. My helmet camera has only an automatic exposure mode, and the manual exposure settings in my prosumer camcorder are uselessly awkward to access. Sure, camera sensors are boasting lower minimum lux requirements than ever before, but they're also ignoring the ever important issues of color rendition and dynamic range despite higher resolutions - and more pixels isn't better pixels! Any digital video sensor is going to "have less exposure latitude (dynamic range) than modern [film,] they tend to 'blow out' highlights, losing detail in very bright parts of the image." These facts combine to make a digital video camcorder a poor tool for properly accurately capturing an artificial lighting environment.

Make one that's just plain scrabbling along with whatever your preferred illumination level is, that would be great. -With practical momentary turbo applications!

But when I change to turbo mode, the camera will simply close the aperture and reduce the exposure - a second of washout and then everything looks the same (with perhaps hopefully better clarity and color rendition). :-P Brighter is always better as it means more information sent to the sensor but as a film maker I have to prioritize evenly lighting things to combat washout and underexposure. The only thing that filming the path ahead at medium mode versus turbo will show are the limitations and reaction times of my camera. Also if I framed the shots better the foreground illuminated bits wouldn't cause the camera to focus and set exposure on them and we'd see more of the throw beyond. If I could lock in the exposure and focal distance and cycle through the modes of the flashlight all you'd really see was how narrow the range of my camera is (either some blackness, detail, or whiteness - depending on where I set the exposure and what light mode I was in). As long as something in the field of view is sufficiently lit, the camera will try to normalize its settings to match and things will all look the same. I totally agree with the idea that proper depiction of practical application would make a stellar video! ...it's just hard to pull off. Spelunkik certainly did a good job there with his little Flip!

This light is definitely bright enough for video... if you have a camera that does okay in low light conditions.

Bright enough indeed. A camera sporting a sensor that "does well" in low light conditions may also still collect light poorly, or in a poor manor, and have no way to assure any sort of good color rendering. A low dynamic range and lousy lens can still make a really fun video with lots of bright pixels in it, but the image will still be crudely assembled. With no control over exposure and focus, the camera will choose to adapt to the brightest spot which is usually the closest bit so the spotlight is lost in the background just because the sensor can't capture that range in the face of the proximity flood - alternatively the hotspot washes out and causes the exposure to drop below what is necessary to define detail from the dimmer portions of the beam.

Ironically, the lousier a camcorder's dynamic range, the better a flashlight will look (or perhaps seem more powerful) through it due to the washout it produces! The best cameras can adapt the image they capture to be suprisingly similar in apparent brightness at quite different lighting levels thus capturing the widest band of light levels within the shot, whereas a cheapo camcorder will be unable to capture either the darkest or the brightest subjects at once and make it look like there are more drastic jumps between modes than a better camera would render.

So in conclusion: Alas! If I wanted to make a video of a flashlight underground that had as much information in its images as in the beam shots taken by our most skilled users here on CPF, I would be looking at taking $4k worth of DSLR camera and lenses and support gear perhaps into some of the harshest environments there are. I think what I needed here was really a bullet list script and a better battery - my next underground flashlight review will be better still I'm sure, and I'll leave the truly informative images to the folks who have mastered taking proper beam-shots. As for the headlamp I should have touched on how to access the advanced modes and program the high setting, the cool way that giving the tailcap a half turn securely locks it off, and gotten a larger variety of shorter but more diverse action-shots of it in use. Better audio next time too for sure.

[eh4]

Video sounds tricky, not to mention whacking the gear against rocks.
I was basically sold on the H600W already but this thread seals the deal, I'm about to the point of thinking that the best backup will be a spare H600W, lol!

[Masque]

Thanks for the very entertaining (and, frankly, even a little inspiring) video review. As for controlling light for comparative beamshots underground, you should be able to borrow even a base-model DSLR that does video, with an inexpensive 50mm or 35mm lens, and take a video segment with settings locked so as to provide true comparisons. It should not require $4k in gear, not anymore. Even 3-year-old DSLRs should have 720p!

I haven't been caving in more years than I should admit. Perhaps it's time to change that.

[richardcpf]

This is one of the best outdoor review videos I've seen. I prefer this many times over videos done in the garage shining at white walls

[Richard Costin]

Nice review, many thanks. This helped me out when deciding on a headlamp.

Richard.

I'm not the best at these reviews, forgive me.....

[biglights]

Nice review!!!!