HELP!!!

Firstly let me say Hi as I'm new to this community..

And secondly, I'm wanting to build a new dive light to replace my MR16 halogen equipped Mag head..

Now living in Australia and frequenting the cutter website I thought that I wanted to squeeze 4 Cree XRE's and associated optics into the Mag until I came across the MC-E.. I did question the suitability of the available MC-E reflector/optic choices (most being MR11 sized and not MR16)..

Doing more research led me here (pardon the pun!) and reading the various threads has just made me even more confused!!

As most of my diving is done here in Sydney where the vis can be anywhere from 1-25m, I'm just wondering what you guys would suggest?

Is there a clear cut X is better than Y scenario here? Do you guys find you need to dim your light at all? If so, how is this achieved?

Basically I have none of the componentry yet save for the D Mag..all else is negotiable..

I'd appreciate your thoughts and I do apologise if this has been asked many times before!

Cheers.
Flo (Adam)

I had a 35w over driven (50watt)halo and replaced it with a P7 based mag. The P7 was alot nicer colour and much longer run time but it didnt put out nearly as much light. MC-E will be the same.
You could go for a triple MC-E as many others have but for the conditions here which sound similar to there I dont believe thats a good option. You will end up with too much flood and not enough spot to cut through the murk.

I have built several quad XR-E aspherics and everyone I have built them for has been well impressed.

I am currently building a 3x XR-E aspheric with a single MC-E mag just to give a little flood to the spot.

Hi Packhorse. Thanks for that.

So are "aspherics" the polycarbonate lenses (for example) as opposed to a metal coated reflector?

Do you just use an MR16 quad mounted board from cutter or do you do a custom mount? The 3 XR-E's and single MC-E sounds interesting..does the beam pattern look ok?

I was looking at running a 14.8v Li-Ion pack (4Ah-5Ah depending on the cells in a 4s2p config) with a 700mA driver.. does this sound about right for a quad XR-E setup? Too conservative perhaps?

The other thing I did forget to mention is that I'll be using a piezo switch for activation..

After some more research I understand what an aspherical lense looks like now..

So..aspherics are more efficient than a reflector, but how do polycarbonate optics (such as the ones from Carclo or Fraen etc) compare both to reflectors and aspherics?