Help making a Flood Light for diving

[Divinglight]

Hi Everyone,

Thanks in advance for reading and for the help.

I am new here and I am trying to either get or make 2 good (powerful) dive lights for underwater video. I do scuba diving and enjoy recording my dives and do some videos with my footage that I end up posting on Youtube, the reason I'm in search of help is because the more light you have underwater the better definition you have (I believe), but the professional good quality lights are extremely expensive like the BigBlue 15000lm which costs over £700 ($1000) because I do not have the money to splash on them I would like to either get something cheap from Alibaba like this light or make one my self.

The initial idea was to actually make one, but due to my lack of knowledge I find myself very lost in the world of LEDs, drivers, batteries, currents etc, especially having in mind that this lights will be to be taken deep underwater 30m or even below. What I would like to try to make is a mix between the camera tray and battery case in this video and the 100w lights in this video.

Could someone guide me on how to make these lights (which LEDs, Driver, battery to use) in a way I can take them underwater and get them to work.

In case you want to have a look at my footage, here it is.

 

[DIWdiver]

There's a reason BigBlue's light is $1000+ and Alibabba's is $61. You get what you pay for. BigBlue isn't even high end.

I've owned some chinesium lights, and only one was seaworthy out of the box. Several (which I planned on modding) couldn't be made seaworthy.

I say build or cough up the cash, don't waste your money on super cheap lights unless you are looking for containers to bring home sea water in.

Unfortunately, if you don't already have some skills, nor a design to follow, a build of this magnitude will be quite a challenge. I would start by reading, reading, reading. There's lots of great builds here. You may also want to check out Budget Light Forums. They also have (or at least had) a pretty active dive light community.

 

[Yorkie88]

I've got 2 of those cheap ones, slight differences between the two as I bought them a year apart from each other but they are both still working. Never leaked, the only issue really is the springs rusting quickly and breaking which makes them look orange. I'm looking for some stainless replacements but not in a rush as they do work still.

The older one doesn't click anymore, I think the soldered switch is just worn out but it still works.

I don't dive particularly deep on the local dives, so it's not an issue for me but on other, deeper dives the buttons aren't always the most reliable, possibly due to the pressure (maybe a spring upgrade would help). They will come on but it might take a few presses. I wish they used a simple toggle!

They dim which might be ok for video but it often causes banding on photos as it's done with PWM I think.

Overall I'm happy with the lights for the prices they charge, but but some decent batteries (I went for Samsung 30Q) to cope with the high draw.

Hope this helps!