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Awesome focusing light! |
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Here's a product introduced to us by one of our guests. This is a really cool little portable light table. It's about the size of a single slide sheet and, as the name suggests, it is very thin and light. The light quality is exceptional, with a uniform, bright, color correct light. What's more, unlike it's closest competitor, it does not require a somewhat heavy accessory power supply. Plug it in, turn on the switch, and you have a nifty traveling slide viewing and editing table all your own. No more violent, eye-clawing, ear-biting, kicking, nostril ripping fights for a turn at the light table on your next live-aboard trip. Now you can have your own private editing suite in your cabin, so you can suffer and cry in private. We're not dealers, but we can certainly help you get one if you can't find one on your own. |
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Light in Motion Sun Ray Mod Light |
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A good focusing light is a necessity for night diving obviously, but equally valuable for day diving when shooting macro and where the subject may be in the shadows, in deeper darker water, in a cave or under a ledge, when using ultra high magnification lens combinations where the bellows effect is significant, or in any situation where you wish to see the a reasonable facsimile of the actual colors and color relationships in a scene for composition decisions. Trouble is, most diving lights adapted for this purpose are crude tools. The color temperature of such dive lights are generally very low, imparting a very yellow, yellow/orange cast to the light, distorting the true color relationships. What's worse, the reflectors are normally so unrefined, the illumination is highly uneven and is a mottle of hot spots and shadows which can make critical focus actually more difficult at times. As well, the beams are often very narrow, requiring constant re-aiming as the subject distance changes even slightly. Lastly, dive lights of sufficient power and burn time to be of any legitimate use have traditionally been overly heavy and bulky. |
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Enter Light in Motion's Sun Ray Mod light. It's tiny really, not much bigger than the palm of your hand, and feather light both in and out of the water. The halogen bulb provides a very ``white light" and the reflector is superbly designed to give extremely even wide beam illumination. With the wide beam, one can, within reason, set it and forget it, in terms of aiming. Only major changes in subject distance require repositioning of the light, and even then the re-aiming |
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process is very quick, as precise accuracy is no longer important. Combined with a super light-weight, flexible bubble arm and shoe mount base, and you have the ultimate in quick positioning. A single button controls on, off, and a three range power setting. The bright setting gives a very intense illumination and a shorter burn time. Whereas the medium and low settings will increase burn time while decreasing the illumination. The lower settings are great for light shy subjects, while high power is instantly available when extra brightness is needed, say for strongly back lit subjects. We find the lowest power setting more than adequate for normal work, and get well over an hour of steady burn time at this output. |
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The only negatives with this light are that the battery pack is built into the light, so when the light needs recharging, it is out of service until recharging is complete. The second negative is the cost. It is the priciest focusing light you're ever likely to consider. However, we, like most of our guests who we have turned on to this light (no pun intended!), have ended up getting two in spite of the cost. They are that good. And once you use them, it is nearly impossible to go back to the trusty old dinosaur light. |
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