TillyTec LED 2000 underwater VIDEO light

Took advantage of TillyTec's fairly unique offer to upgrade almost any of its light-heads or battery-packs to a newer more powerful one.

That is, I exchanged my outdated-technology HID 35 not just for one, but for two new LED 2000 VIDEO light-heads, in order to have a dual evenly illuminated video lighting solution.

TillyTec's standard LED 2000 has a 175W halogen equivalent 10° beam ideal for technical diving, whereas the non-focussed VIDEO version has a more diffused 110° wide beam optimal for videography.


⊕ Modular & expandable underwater lighting system configurable to one's needs.

⊕ Power: Seven hi-tech LEDs delivering 175W of halogen equivalent output according to TillyTec's specifications (5500°K, 45000 Lux).

∅ Despite its power, the VIDEO version has a rather limited range.

⊕ Burn time: two LED 2000 light-heads can shine for more than 100' on one TT 3 NiMh battery-pack. (note that it is not possible to connect two LED 2000s to a single Flexi II or TT 2 battery)

⊕ Robustness.

∅ It's not possible to dim the output, nor change the beam's angle.

⊕ A diffuser is available that can be popped on or off underwater. While not needed for the VIDEO version (except maybe for reducing its intensity), it can be useful for softening the SPOT version's beam.

∅ Note that, even with diffuser, the LED 2000 SPOT has a hotspot when pointed towards nearby subjects or surfaces, so this option is not recommended for e.g. macro photography or close-up videography.

⊕ A Goodman handle and flexible arms are available as accessory. Both can hold e.g. TillyTec's HID 35, LED 1000 or LED 2000.

⊕ IMO, TillyTec's LED 2000 VIDEO produces nice hotspot-free illumination for macro photography or close-up videography.

→ macro photography illuminated by just one LED 2000 VIDEO
→ close-up videography illuminated by one LED 2000 VIDEO

TillyTec LED 1000 underwater light

Having a movie project in mind needing illumination, I once more turned to TillyTec, maker of lights for divers venturing into darkness. And came back home with a bright new TillyTec LED 1000.


⊕ Modularity & expandability.

⊕ Power: 100W halogen equivalent output according to the manufacturer's specifications (5000°K, 25000 Lux).

⊕ Burn time: 195' on my Green Force Flexi II NiMh battery.

⊕ Robustness.

∅ It is not possible to dim the light's output, nor change the beam's angle from e.g. spot to flood. Remark that while you can slightly adjust the beam's focus while underwater, it's not really recommended to do so, due to the risk of flooding should any dirt have lodged itself on the lens's o-ring.

⊕ The clear glass lens can be replaced by a frosted one for more diffused lighting purposes.

⊕ A Goodman handle is available as optional accessory, and highly recommended for e.g. cave or wreck diving, where having one's hands free for other tasks may be crucial.

⊕ Great light both for recreational & technical diving.

→ LED 1000 in action while night diving with & filming white tip reef sharks around Cocos Island

→ LED 1000 (with diffuser) in conjunction with a HID 35 (with flood reflector) while cave diving in Mexico

Check & try excursion

Düsseldorf not being just around the corner, we decide to go to Munich on a check & try excursion to various diveshops, in stead of visiting the huge boot watersports fair up north, where I could easily spend a couple of days browsing the multitude of stands brimming with dive equipment & gadgets, in the process most probably ending up succumbing to the temptation of acquiring just a few more bits & pieces of extraneous gear. Maybe next year I'll get to go back to wonderland...

From Sonthofen it's about two hours by train to München HBF. With a Bayern Ticket, costing 27€ and valid for up to five persons, we can travel the whole day within Bavaria (= south Germany), with unlimited use of any bus, tram, metro or train! It snowed last night and everything seems to be covered with a thin layer of powder sugar. Maybe this time it's for real?

First stop: Gerda's dive shop, a typical small scuba store fully packed with goodies. My eyes are pulling me all over the place and I've got a hard time getting focused on our primary objective. That is, until I get it in my hands: the Reef Rider, a wing-type travel BCD from Aeris. It fits Petra like a glove and while a bit small, it feels pretty snug on me too. Perfect fit indeed. Very clean uncluttered front. Breast strap. Reflective strips. Eight small plastic D-rings (in stead of heavy stainless-steel ones so loved by tekkies). Two small but useable pockets unencumbered by the two ditchable weight pockets positioned near the hip sides. Two removable trim pockets located on the cam-band. The four weight pockets together should be good for up to 10kg of lead. More than enough for tropical diving. Besides the inflation/deflation hose, there's one dump valve on the lower left side. Thanks to it's minimalistic design, the Reef Rider, at about 3kg, is very light compared to standard jackets - another definite plus. The only minus is it's rather limited lift capacity of only 24lbs in size M. Though it should be enough for warm water diving, I'd feel a bit more comfortable with a few pounds more, as with the 32lbs in size L. All in all, from a dry point of view, a recommendable jacket that I'd very much like to test underwater.

Lunch of the day in the -where else- Wassermann café-bar-restaurant.

Second stop: Tauchsport Manta, another small dive store, where we want to check out some of its second-hand stuff: a Bare 5mm wetsuit and a Cressi S111 jacket. Unfortunately the suit's too tight for Petra and the jacket (size XS), while nicely built, a bit too small, too bulky and too heavy.

Third stop: TTS Sport Kaindl, a modern sports shop with a great selection of Camaro & Mares wetsuits and various jackets among other things. But nothing that fits the missus.

Coffee & muffin break in Starbucks for a quick recapitulation of today's findings. For while we didn't get to buy anything, we certainly learned a lot and eliminated quite a few options.

Stroll around München's city center before heading back to the train station and returning home. Without even having bought a dive magazine! I guess I'll just have to get my fix online then.

TillyTec HID 35 underwater light

I met Tilly at Boot 2006. He's one of the original men behind Green Force. Until he went his way and formed his own company. TillyTec's modular lights are fully compatible with Green Force's components.

Disappointed by Green Force's misinformation and lack of improved models, and having some reservations about their HID lights, Tilly had no trouble convincing me to try out one of his new power lights.


⊕ Modularity & expandability. Not to mention compatibility with my Green Force set-up, i.e. umbilical cable & Flexi II battery pack.

⊕ Power: with an output equivalent to a 125W halogen bulb, this High Intensity Discharge light shines very brightly indeed (5500°K).

⊕ Burn time: combined with my Green Force Flexi II NiMh battery, TillyTec's HID 35 burns for about 90'. Coupled with a TT 3 battery pack, it can shine for up to 200': enough for long exploration dives.

⊕ Robustness is a critical requirement when cave or wreck diving. Luckily this light head is build so as to withstand some rough treatment. Meaning the bulb shouldn't burst just because you bump or dump it. And supposedly it will even keep burning should the light head get flooded for some reason.

⊕ Great light for technical diving purposes.

⊕ A HID bulb's lifetime is primarily measured in number of times one can power it on & off. With an expected 2000 switches, this one should last for a while.

∅ HIDs have a warm-up & cool-down delay, meaning they can't just be switched on & off at will.

∅ It is not possible to dim the light's output, nor change the beam's angle from spot to flood. Remark that while you can slightly adjust the beam's focus while underwater, it's not really recommended to do so, due to the risk of flooding should any dirt have lodged itself on the lens's o-ring.

⊕ You can choose from two reflectors and two glass types depending on your lighting needs. The standard light head comes with a 10° reflector and clear glass lens providing a nicely focused beam.

⊕ For use with my digital camera, I also bought an 80° flood reflector and frosted glass lens, in order to reduce, if not avoid, any hotspot. The frosted glass spreads out the light more evenly, further increasing the flood reflector's beam angle to about 100°, thereby however also reducing its intensity. Note that while adequate, this solution's not quite optimal yet for videography. Compared to a dedicated video light head though, it's a very affordable alternative.

⊕ A Goodman handle is available as optional accessory, and highly recommended for e.g. cave or wreck diving, where having one's hands free for other tasks may be crucial.

Sea&Sea DX8000G underwater camera

Though branded as a Sea&Sea underwater camera, it's actually an eight megapixels Ricoh Caplio GX8 digital compact camera in a polycarbonate Sea&Sea underwater housing.

At time of purchase, this camera was the best solution considering my requirements: a very compact underwater set-up both with wide angle and macro capability, at least 5MP, no shutter-lag to worry about, a maximum depth rating greater than 40m and an affordable price tag.


⊕ Sea&Sea's housing perfectly envelops Ricoh's GX8 compact camera, and allows easy access to all its functions.

⊕ Very compact package. I want to be able to take the camera into caves & inside wrecks, so the smaller it is, the better. Besides, with my dive gear already taking up most of my travel weight allowance, I just can't afford an extra case with bulky camera equipment. Another advantage is that the DX8000G's small size allows for some great shot angles from 'dirt'-level.

⊕ The 0.6x wide angle conversion lens, which can be put on or taken off underwater, turns the already wide 28mm* into a very wide 17mm* lens (* focal lengths are 35mm film camera equivalents). Perfect for pictures of large subjects - when they dare come close, underwater sceneries or wrecks.

∅ Zoom range. With a 3x optical zoom lens going from 28mm* wide angle to 85mm* portrait, I can take both diver pictures (without having to back off too far) and super-macro shots of pretty tiny subjects (as close as 1cm with wide angle or 10cm with tele lens).

⊗ Zooming badly affects image quality, making it quasi useless.

⊕ Maximum depth rating of -55m.

⊕ Auto-focus. What a great feature after the manual guessing with Sea&Sea's analogue Motor Marine II EX.

∅ The camera does have some trouble auto-focussing in low light low contrast situations. There is however also a manual-focus option, but I haven't bothered yet to try it out.

⊗ Lacking optical image stabilization, a.k.a. anti-shake, it's hard, though not impossible, to get sharp pictures in super-macro mode due to hand shake, body movement or restless subjects. You really need to be able to stabilize yourself (e.g. with a stick). Plenty of light of course helps too.

⊕ Instant feedback! Allowing for corrective measures on the spot when necessary.

∅ Rather small 1.8" LCD.

⊕ MMC or SD memory cards up to 1GB. I kind of like the fact that I can use these multi-purpose memory card formats, in stead of the more brand specific ones like xD, compact flash, memory stick, etc. I use Sandisk SD Ultra II (512MB) & Extreme III (1GB) cards, good for about 150 & 300 photos respectively, in JPEG format at maximum resolution (3264x2448 pixels).

⊗ Internal memory of only 26MB. A joke really. But as far as I know, this is the case with most digital cameras, e.g. none really have any useful internal memory.

⊕ Almost unlimited number of exposures, with adequate memory-card & fully loaded batteries. No longer limited to 36 film exposures, this gives me the freedom to try again and again with various settings & angles, allowing me to experiment & try things out (without it costing anything).

⊕ Image quality is arguably not quite the same as with film cameras. The original JPEGs often have a certain flatness, missing the vibrant quality & depth of celluloid. However, with adequate editing software a lot can be done :o)

→ underwater snapshots taken while shark diving in the Bahamas

∅ Rather poor low-light performance. Due to the small 1/1.8" CCD sensor, using ISO values above 100 immediately results in very grainy images.

⊗ While it's really great to be able to take AVI video-clips at 30fps, the maximum resolution of only 320x240 pixels is sub-standard.

⊗ Lighting issue: I did not buy an external strobe for this camera, because I don't like the fiber-optic cable slave-mode solution. In my opinion, it drains camera batteries for nothing besides slowing down the camera too much - as it takes several seconds to reload the built-in flash, during which the camera is out-of-action. In stead I've tried to use my dive torches:

• Green Force's TriStar Diamond (less than 30W halogen equivalent), with its three little LEDs, doesn't quite come close to providing the necessary light for macro shots, but using it may help afterwards during post-processing to restore some of the reds.

• TillyTec's HID 35 (125W halogen equivalent) with flood reflector, in conjunction with TillyTec's LED 1000 (100W halogen equivalent) with diffuser, provided just enough light for an underwater video project in Mexico's cenotes. In the total darkness of the fresh water caves, photography however still wasn't practically feasible with this camera.

⊕ Battery type: Two universally available AA cells (alkaline or rechargeable), custom-made high capacity rechargeable battery or AC adapter. So far I've used:

− Rechargeable AA NiMH cells from Sanyo (1.2 V, 2300 & 2500 mAh). While kind of satisfied with their performance (good for about 100 shots w/o flash), they completely self-discharge within a week and totally give up after about a year's moderate usage.

+ Rechargeable AA NiMH cells from Ansmann (1.2 V, max-e 2100 mAh). These provide enough power for my camera to be almost always on, even on 2h long dives! Remarkably better than my supposedly more powerful, but unreliable, self-draining Sanyo cells.

⊗ Battery indicator: Consisting of only 3 rather imprecise levels (3/3, 2/3 & 1/3), the battery indicator isn't of much use, except as a very rough & unreliable estimate.

Green Force TriStar Diamond underwater light

Green Force has a whole selection of light heads (Halogen, LED, HID) and multiple battery packs of various sizes that can be put together as needed, either directly (for handheld torches) or via umbilical cable (for handsfree lighting, together with e.g. a Goodman handle).

This modularity and the promise of a virtually unbreakable LED light with decent output and long burn time, made me choose for the TriStar with Flexi II battery. Not to mention it's "Made in Belgium".

⊕ Modularity & expandability.

⊗ Power? I was told by Green Force that the TriStar Diamond's output would be at least equivalent to a 30W halogen bulb. Alas, that's not really the case, actual equivalent output being at most 20W. With a 20° beam, that means it's useless during daytime dives or when there are a lot of particles in the water.

⊗ Twice the power and focus would make it an acceptable light, but as it is, it's just too weak for technical diving.

⊕ For recreational night dives however, I found it to be quite decent, the soft white light (5800°K) rather pleasant.

⊕ Burn time: together with Green Force's Flexi II NiMh battery, the TriStar Diamond burns for at least 9 hours at near 100%!

⊕ Robustness. Besides their long burn time, LED lights also offer some other advantages: robustness, lifetime of the bulbs, no problems switching them on & off at will, and in the case of the TriStar Diamond, built-in redundancy due to the fact that there are, as the name implies, three LED bulbs. All this unlike the more expensive and delicate HID lights which have a warm-up & cool-down delay and a limited number of times they can be turned on & off.

⊕ Maximum depth rating of -140m.