Aiming Lights

[Neopreneninja 0]

Hi All !

Fantasea 360...I've used mine during my latest Egypt trip and had NO problems...

Fairly wide beam and good range(have never tried any af the priciere Focus lights) chose this model over the "Nano"(bad reviews/flooding issue+ only 9 LED's) & the "Deeper Blue" 1x5w(pricy/+must have narrowere beam than the 360..36xLED's vs: 1x5w LED..so better for night time wide shoots)

I mostly shoot macro/to app. 1m at night...but I think it woluld do ok for more/deeper range.

Made a neopren hood and difuser (DIY)...workes just great with my little Fuji f31, 2x 50 ike's with controllere's and Inon linse's Kit!

I even used it as a normal Dive light...only little hick up was every so often some one would point a flashlight ore shoot of a Strobe and it would cut off...but only for a sec.

I'm generally really pleast with it...I'm NOT going to pay close to my system/Kit prise for a Focus light...Year they look great and every thing...but I'm not Diving with a Canon 5d ore worse...he he! (I'm just envious of you Pro Guys...love your pic's)

So as I see it:

Pro's: Good batt. life-Nice beam-The price-Ok build-Fairly compact

Con's: Beam coming true the side(Why? blind the Diver/buddy!??)-the swich is too small and fiddley-the flashing light mode(Why??safty Well...super batt. life in normal mode)

Hope this will help other Gear heads(jup i'm one!)

Have fun and send more pic's..I'm hooked!!

[Gus_Smedstad 0]

Anyone had any experiences with Fantasea Line LED Nano Focus Light?

I brought one of those to Bonaire last week. It flooded on the first dive. Salt water + 4 AA's NIMH batteries = a nasty mess.

 

I tried a Princeton 4AA dive light purchased locally as a substitute. The beam was frankly far too narrow, I had to constantly re-adjust the aim. In theory it was always parallel to the lens, but in practice it drifted. It's difficult to get a really stiff connection with a ball-and-arm system or even the YS-type bracket I used to hold the light.

 

I rented a Fisheye HG20DX from Buddy Dive for 2 nights. The beam is ridiculously wide, far, far wider than I actually needed, and at the lowest setting it was more than sufficient for focus on a night dive. For crevices on a daylight dive, I did end up using the max brightness, which is very bright at night. I'm here looking to see if there's anything in between. The HG20DX beam width is really overkill, and battery life seems like an issue if you use it for more than night diving. And it's expensive. But it sure does work.

 

- Gus

[Natalie_S 1]

If you are looking for a great focus light, in the mid-priced area that is better than a mini flash light, but not the wallet buster like the bigger Fisheye and Hartenberger lights, take a good look at the Big Blue FF 1x5 with Flash Off LED. Its a very nice light, comes with the ball adapter and a handle...and sells for $149.

 

I also use the Big Blue 1x5 FO. It's a great light, very even white light, no hotspots. I've found that the lock that is supposed to prevent the light turning on by accident doesn't always work well, so I check it after every entry/exit. This light is almost too bright in some circumstances, but for the price, I can't complain!

[CompuDude 0]

I used the Fisheye Fix LED focus light, which appears to be a dead ringer for the Fantasea Nano, for a trip to Bali last month, and really enjoyed it. No problems whatsoever in 32 dives. First time using a focus light for me, so it was quite a treat. Smaller camera, though. My buddies with DSLRs all had the Fantasea LED 360 (or was it the LED44? I never found out for sure), which was MUCH larger and put out a MUCH larger circle of light, but I think that would have overwhelmed my poor little camera. I did prefer the AA's used by the 360, however, and wish my light used that instead of AAAs, so I didn't need to manage multiple battery types on the charger.

 

The Fisheye Fix Mini LED focus light and the Fantasea Nano Focus light both use AAA batteries, however, not AA. There are a number of websites out there that do not accurately quote this information in their specs, I've noticed, including the manufacturer's site (in the case of Fisheye). Whoops!

 

Interestingly, the guys at Reef Photo told me they didn't carry the Fantasea Nano because they had so many units that were bad and/or leaked immediately when they were testing them. They carried the Fisheye version instead, and said they have not had any reports of issues. Seems odd considering it seems likely they're both made by the same OEM, I'd assume, since they seem identical, but there you go. Reports in this thread do seem to back up their report.

[Gus_Smedstad 0]

You're right, the Fantasea and the Princeton 21 dive light I used both took AAA's, not AA's - I have no idea why I consistently mis-typed that.

 

Very interesting about Reef Photo and the Fantasea Nano. It looks exactly like the Fisheye Mini. I'm not sure how wide a beam either throws, since mine flooded immediately, but the Princeton was way too narrow. I definitely have to get something with a broader beam.

 

- Gus

[DuikKees 1]

Is this focuslight-thing really such a big issue? I use for many years and dives a simple $10,- LED divelight. I sanded the frontglas to diffuus the light so I have a nice wide beam. The camera focusses nice with this light.

 

OK, it has no lightsensor to shut of when the strobe fires. But usually the shutter is fast and aparture is small, so you will not see any LEDlight in the photo.

 

Am I missing something that I must have a dedicated aiminglight?

[acuevas 4]

Is this focuslight-thing really such a big issue? I use for many years and dives a simple $10,- LED divelight. I sanded the frontglas to diffuus the light so I have a nice wide beam. The camera focusses nice with this light.

 

OK, it has no lightsensor to shut of when the strobe fires. But usually the shutter is fast and aparture is small, so you will not see any LEDlight in the photo.

 

Am I missing something that I must have a dedicated aiminglight?

 

This is maybe a newbie question but, how do you avoid the backscatter if the focus light doesn't have a light sensor?

 

I noticed that not all the expensive focus lights have a light sensor to shut off when the strobe fires.

Maybe for macro is not an issue but what about wide angle in low light and low visibility?

 

Regards,

Andres.

[DuikKees 1]

Okee with WA in low viz and low light, I can understand that.

But I have never even thougt about using a focuslight in such conditions, I just prefocus since the depth of field of my FE is enormous.

 

For how long will the light shut off? In low light the shutterspeeds can be verry long.

[alanchungsf 0]

Hi, just want to share my experience with my Fantasea 360. I got it after reading this threat. There's good news and bad. The bad is it flooded on the very first dive of a 2 week trip. But fortunately it was not a bad flood, I was able to rescue it after soaking it in fresh water for an hour and letting it dry for the next 2 days. It came back to life with only 2 of the 36 LEDs burnt out. Even the 4 rechargable AAs were fine. So that's the good news. I think the flooding was caused by a lack of instructions. There are 2 grooves below the screw thread, and the o-ring fits either groove, so I initially put the o-ring in the groove that is closer to the battery compartment. That is the wrong choice, it should go on the other groove. I suspect some of the floodings I've read in reviews are caused by this problem. No where does the instructions say which groove should the o-ring go into. After I got it working again, I decided to be super safe and put the spare o-ring in the 2nd groove so I had 2 o-rings. But be warned it was super hard to open it even with well greased o-rings. It took 2 people and a good port wrench to unscrew it. But it stayed dry the rest of 2 weeks, even with deep dives to over 100ft.

 

The other good news is once I got it working, it worked great with my Nikkor 105 macro lens. It was bright and the beam pattern was wide enough that I didn't need to aim it much during my dives. In terms of battery life it is good but no where near as good as it's claim of 30 hours. I found it would get dimmer after 2-3 hours of use, and I had to recharge after 4 hours. Which is fine because that meant it lasted the whole day even if I shot only macro, and I can recharge at night.

 

Overall I liked the light and it really helped me get some great shots of pygmy seahorses that would have been hard without.

[rinjani 9]

I purchased a Bossk Big Blue 1x5 and tried it on a recent trip. It worked extremely well for me. Comes with a set of rechargable AAs which lasted through a day or diving (I turned the light off when not using it). The auto light off when it detects a strobe firing is pretty helpful. The light is very white compared to an incandescent light (and seemed to attract a lot of critters at night). For $150 I am pretty happy with it. Comes with a ball mount and was easy to mount on my rig with some extra ultrlight components.

 

rinjani

[Deep6 7]

Hi Bob!

Be sure to post me how the 360 works etc. I got a 100 $ giftcard from P&H, so if the 360 is really good (and when PH start's selling it) I just might order it myself and leave the Nano for backup

Cheers,

Scubamoose

I have been remiss in that I have not reported my experience with the LED 360. I had a minor flood (a few drops) during pool tests prior to my Phi. Trip. I notified Fantasea. During my trip, the light failed on my second night dive (both dives were fairly shallow). Fortunately, I had the little nano light as a backup spotting light.

 

Fantasea made an adjustment with me which included LED 44 which does not blink with flash. In mucky conditions, a light that illumines a broad column of water will produce a lot of undesired backscatter. I will return to the technique I used before I got the LED 360; using a spotting light (like the LED 44) to spot and barely fringe the subject and the nano (which does blink) to assist with focusing.

Bob

[harrym 0]

Recently I purchased a Fisheye FIX LED500DX. I really liked the idea of rheostat for variable brightness so I chose a light like this instead of an ordinary dive light. I just returned home from a week of diving on Cozumel with the Fisheye FIX LED500DX. Here are the grades:

 

As an aiming light for close-ups & macro: A+

As a general aiming light: F

As a backup or primary dive light: F-

 

The Fisheye FIX LED500DX uses 8 AA batteries. I purchased 20 brand-new high-quality Eneloop AA 2000mA NiMH batteries. These are low self-discharge and have a long shelf life. They came fully charged and ready to go. In the week before I left for Cozumel, I ran all batteries through the "break-in" mode of my MAHA MH-C9000 "smart charger." During the dive trip, I cycled the batteries through both the strobe and the Fisheye FIX LED500DX, and recharged them every night on the MAHA MH-C9000.

 

The Fisheye FIX LED500DX and the MAHA MH-C9000 smart charger

 

 

As a focus light for night-time close-up and macro photography, I loved the Fisheye FIX LED500DX. It made night photography so much easier. The beam was wide and even. At full power it can even provide some additional illumination of the subject that is not entirely overcome by the flash.

 

 

As a general focus light and dive light, the Fisheye FIX LED500DX is a total failure. The light is advertised as having a 72 to 90 minute life as a primary dive light. It will automatically switch to the low-power mode when the batteries become low.

 

I found that, when turned to the full power setting, the Fisheye FIX LED500DX reverted to the low-power mode in only two minutes! I was unable to turn the light back to the bright power mode for the rest of the dive. In the low-power mode, the light had a life of several hours.

 

In the lower power mode, there was enough light for close-up and macro shooting. But I could not get the camera to autofocus on anything more than 3 feet away, and I could not see anything in the camera's viewfinder if the subject was more than 5 feet away..

 

I took my camera set-up on a cave dive on Cozumel Island. I had my primary 18W HID light clipped off to my right D-ring and used the Fisheye FIX LED500DX as my primary dive light. This too was a total failure because the Fisheye FIX LED500DX immediately reverted to the low-power setting and I was unable to get the camera's autofocus to work properly in such a low-light environment. I had to use my 18W HID light for focusing.

 

THE FISHEYE FIX LED500DX SHOULD NOT BE USED AS A PRIMARY DIVE LIGHT AS ADVERTISED.

 

Edited December 14, 2009 by harrym

[bvanant 189]

Recently I purchased a Fisheye FIX LED500DX. I really liked the idea of rheostat for variable brightness so I chose a light like this instead of an ordinary dive light. I just returned home from a week of diving on Cozumel with the Fisheye FIX LED500DX. Here are the grades:

 

As an aiming light for close-ups & macro: A+

As a general aiming light: F

As a backup or primary dive light: F-

 

The Fisheye FIX LED500DX uses 8 AA batteries. I purchased 20 brand-new high-quality Eneloop AA 2000mA NiMH batteries. These are low self-discharge and have a long shelf life. They came fully charged and ready to go. In the week before I left for Cozumel, I ran all batteries through the "break-in" mode of my MAHA MH-C9000 "smart charger." During the dive trip, I cycled the batteries through both the strobe and the Fisheye FIX LED500DX, and recharged them every night on the MAHA MH-C9000.

 

The Fisheye FIX LED500DX and the MAHA MH-C9000 smart charger

 

 

As a focus light for night-time close-up and macro photography, I loved the Fisheye FIX LED500DX. It made night photography so much easier. The beam was wide and even. At full power it can even provide some additional illumination of the subject that is not entirely overcome by the flash.

 

 

As a general focus light and dive light, the Fisheye FIX LED500DX is a total failure. The light is advertised as having a 72 to 90 minute life as a primary dive light. It will automatically switch to the low-power mode when the batteries become low.

 

I found that, when turned to the full power setting, the Fisheye FIX LED500DX reverted to the low-power mode in only two minutes! I was unable to turn the light back to the bright power mode for the rest of the dive. In the low-power mode, the light had a life of several hours.

 

In the lower power mode, there was enough light for close-up and macro shooting. But I could not get the camera to autofocus on anything more than 3 feet away, and I could not see anything in the camera's viewfinder if the subject was more than 5 feet away..

 

I took my camera set-up on a cave dive on Cozumel Island. I had my primary 18W HID light clipped off to my right D-ring and used the Fisheye FIX LED500DX as my primary dive light. This too was a total failure because the Fisheye FIX LED500DX immediately reverted to the low-power setting and I was unable to get the camera's autofocus to work properly in such a low-light environment. I had to use my 18W HID light for focusing.

 

THE FISHEYE FIX LED500DX SHOULD NOT BE USED AS A PRIMARY DIVE LIGHT AS ADVERTISED.

 

I would send the light back to whomever you bought it from. My experience over the last 50 dives or so is that it easily lasts at 90% power for more than an hour using eneloops charged up the day before the dive. Mine will switch to low power sometime after 75 minutes or so.

 

Bill

[eyu 27]

I wonder if you have a bad eneloop battery. Have you tested them with a pulse tester?

Also have you tried a set of alkaline batteries?

 

Elmer

[harrym 0]

I did some additional burn-time testing of the Fisheye FIX LED500DX with alkaline batteries.

 

Let's review the owner's manual:

 

"Continuous burn times (with included alkaline batteries): 90 min. (max output) - 720 minutes (minimum output). Then switches to low power for 20-30 minutes extra reserve burn time."

 

Here are my test results:

 

Batteries - Burn time

 

Included alkaline batteries - burn time of 16 seconds at max output before reverting to low power

 

Brand-new Energizer Max alkaline batteries - Burn time of 7 minutes 11 seconds at maximum output before reverting to low power

 

The data speaks for itself.

 

THE FISHEYE FIX LED500DX SUCKS

Edited December 15, 2009 by harrym

[eyu 27]

yes, the data speaks for itself, you have a defective light.

Send it back for a new one.

 

I have both the older Fisheye HD20DX and LED48DX, and have been very pleased with them.

They work very well.

Edited December 17, 2009 by eyu

[harrym 0]

yes, the data speaks for itself, you have a defective light.

Send it back for a new one.

 

I have had many, many people write to me and say the same thing. They got a defective Fisheye FIX LED500DX at first and had to replace it.

 

That fact speaks for itself. The Fisheye FIX LED500DX is a terrible light.

Edited December 25, 2009 by harrym

[Pfuller 1]

I've just been reading this thread while researching focus lights, and it looks like the Fantasea 360 has been discontinued due to design faults leading to leaks.

 

Thought i'd just add it to the thread for future readers.

[CompuDude 0]

I've just been reading this thread while researching focus lights, and it looks like the Fantasea 360 has been discontinued due to design faults leading to leaks.

 

Thought i'd just add it to the thread for future readers.

Damn. That looked like the perfect focus light for me. The Fisheye ones are nice as well, but wow, spendy. The little Nano has worked well for me, but there isn't a good next step up, it seems.

 

I had ordered the LED44, but I somehow missed that it doesn't blink out when you take the shot, so I think it's not what I'm looking for.

[Pfuller 1]

Damn. That looked like the perfect focus light for me. The Fisheye ones are nice as well, but wow, spendy. The little Nano has worked well for me, but there isn't a good next step up, it seems.

 

I had ordered the LED44, but I somehow missed that it doesn't blink out when you take the shot, so I think it's not what I'm looking for.

 

 

Yeah..me too. Hopefully they will revist the design and get a MK11 out soon. Does the nano switch off during exposure?

[CompuDude 0]

Yeah..me too. Hopefully they will revist the design and get a MK11 out soon. Does the nano switch off during exposure?

Yup! Great little light. Just wish it was a bit bigger. You know, like the 360.

[hyptest 3]

The Big Blue 1x5 does as well.. Can't say it's completely reliable at shutting off for me, but then

the nano wasn't either. Definitely much brighter if a bit oversized. Only two dives on it, but

overall I like it so far.

 

 

Yup! Great little light. Just wish it was a bit bigger. You know, like the 360.

[CompuDude 0]

The Big Blue 1x5 does as well.. Can't say it's completely reliable at shutting off for me, but then

the nano wasn't either. Definitely much brighter if a bit oversized. Only two dives on it, but

overall I like it so far.

Yeah, I'll admit they've been of interest... the price is somewhat reasonable (compared to high end lights, but not horridly more than the Fantasea lights). I just can't get past the size and the looks. Hate it.

Edited January 9, 2010 by CompuDude

[JimSwims 31]

I recently picked up a Fisheye Fix mini LED, which is identical to the Fantasea Nano, and so far so good. I was initially highly

 

dubious about this light due to the many reports of people flooding this design and now I have one I can understand how.

 

The twist on/off mechanism looks vulnerable with potential for grit to be drawn across the o-ring. But performance wise the

 

light is ideal for Macro use with even light bright enough to do the job and Like others have mentioned the auto cut-off feature

 

is a great boon. I will be very careful with the maintenance of it and make sure to only twist switch just enough to turn on or off.

 

I had like others been looking at the now discontinued Fantasea 360 for the extra brightness and after looking at a friends Big Blue

 

decided that was to large for my liking. Hopefully there will continue to be some affordable compact lights to fit this niche. It will be

 

interesting to see what new releases come out in the near future.

 

 

 

Cheers,

Jim.

[Gus_Smedstad 0]

The Big Blue 1x5 does as well..

What's the beam width like on that? As I said upthread, I had a good experience with a rented Fisheye, and a large part of that was the very wide beam width. The little Princeton I bought was difficult to aim because the beam width was so narrow.

 

- Gus