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I spoke to Eric Squires at Light & Motion, about the HID light that L&M
showed at DEMA.
It's an HID ballasted light, powered by NiMH battery with an "equivalent"
output of ~500W (he says you cannot rate HID lights the same as tungsten),
burns about 1 hour, weighs about 4lbs and will cost in the $1500 range to
be available "in the fall of 96". RSN.
They also have, now, a new tungsten light the SunRay-NiMH. It uses NiMH
dual batteries (so burn time about 1.25 hours), but I think still uses the
weenie 30W (which L&M rates as "bright as 50w") tungsten lamps. Their
brochure states that the new light produces "20-30% more light than the
current 20w SunRay system" i.e., 39W?. The two pods, that used to hold the
Makita batteries, mate (one each side) to their U/W camera housing and are
redesigned. Each pod has an A/B switch for the two batteries in each pod.
I wonder why they didn't just wire the batteries in parallel for a 24v
system. This should up the output to ~80W, even at the old burn-time of 40
mins.
John Kjoll e-mailed me the following info about HID auto lamps:
Some numbers from automobile low-beams (Osram Sylvania):
55W halogen: 18 lum/Watt and 3200'K
35W HID: 86 lum/Watt and 4800'K.
and about arc lights:
Briefly:
expect the lamp to last 10k hours.
Expect about 8000 Volts to initiate the "spark".
Expect about 80 Amps to get it running.
(Unitrode makes a "ballast" that does just this: the UCC2305 and UCC3305.)
Maybe its's my lack of knowledge, but 8000v sounds a little too wicked for
me and 80A too pricey, though that might only be for a few minutes, til
it's firing. Heat's a problem too. Rich, you could actually preserve your
specimens by pointing the light at them and frying the fish on the fly.
So the HID is on the horizon, if the auto industry gets into the picture
the price of the lamps should come down and they may well be OK to dive
to 100' or so, off the shelf. Rod Farb, did you ever get to use one of
the L&M HIDs?
-ph
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