I managed to get hold of a pair of DivePro G18 Plus samples last week to use for my wide angle video hereby my thoughts on this product that I believe could be interesting for many video shooters.
Construction and technical data: solid anodised aluminium smoothly finished. Jaunt has decided to expose the battery that screws into the light head as oppose to house the battery itself into the light a more conventional design. The light features a Cree CXB3590 LED with a color temperature of 5000K and a CRI of 92 with declared output of 18,000 Lumens and a 95 degree beam angle. The battery delivers 14.4V with a total capacity of 6800 mAh giving an autonomy of 52 minutes at full power of 105 minutes at half power. The technical specifications of Creed LED give full details of the light used https://www.cree.com/led-components/media/documents/ds-CXB3590.pdf
When you look at page 14 performance group EB you see 15000 lumens nominal per bin, take into account that the array has an efficiency of 120% so this gives you the nominal lumens. In terms of viewing angle the nominal beam in air is 115 degrees and this in water gives you 100 degrees according to my calculations am not sure how Jaunt worked out 95 degrees. Looking at page 10 you can see that even at CRI=90 there is a spike in the navy blue colour this is most likely to show in water when combined with close up lenses as blue fringing and should be completely irrelevant at wide angle.
The provided chargers delivery only 1A with a declared charging time of 8 hours that frankly is totally unacceptable for a video light.
I recommend getting a spare battery the code is DivePro B06. The light has a color indication for the charge level around the switch button that is simple and effective at the same time although you don’t get your residual time in minutes as you do from some other products.
Ergonomics: the light feels very much like a torch and when attached to the included ball mount is very bottom heavy. The fresh water weight is 350 grams and becomes 370 grams with the mount. The light feels very well built, smooth and rugged.
The light switch system allows for 100% 50% and any intensity from 1% to full power however this is slightly difficult to use, there is also an SOS feature. Generally the light feels well designed with few small niggles, the ball attachment is quite long this is not an issue except the light is already heavy on the bottom whilst the attachment to the arm is in the front part this creates a significant torque especially on land. Use of a bespoke underwater float is advised. Another minor issue of the ball mount is that it is not actually 1” but 2.65 cm. 1mm may seem little but it does bring the clamp off balance making it easier to loose grip. I recommend changing the o-rings with normal buna rings to reduce the size and improve grip if you use Ultralight, Inon or Nauticam arm systems. Another small issue of the switch system is that at rest on land the button may hit the floor. Previous version of the light switch on immediately at button press now Jaunt has changed the logic of the switch on to a long 2 second press to avoid accidentally switching on the light.
As the light overheats outside water this will prevent LED burnout. I had the latest version of the light, other copies on the market may still have the old logic check carefully yours.
Field test: Testing the light in a tank confirms the beam angle and the battery life as per specification more detailed testing is only possible in the pool.
I tested the lights in a pool with a 5 meters deep end. Pools have controlled conditions to check how the lights fall off and what is the real life coverage of the lights for your lens. It is not possible to provide a real test of the geometry of a light in the sea unless you know exactly the dimensions of what you are shooting and you have flat surfaces. I have some diving end of April in the Mediterranean will provide an update later on open water performance especially in terms of color rendering that I have not checked in the pool.
Beam angle: I took a series of stills at 80, 100, 150 from the axis of the lights using arms 28” long to which you need to add the length of the tray to determine where the light beams will meet.
As expected at 80 cm you see two separate circles of light, this become an elliptical shape at 100 cm and fill the frame at 125 cm with small fall off at the edges.
This pool shot gives an idea of the coverage only the edges are dark and the light is very nicely distributed. I have removed the reflections of the lights on the wall as they are distracting.
In order to understand the light falloff I ran the stills into a monitor equipped with false colour you can see the results here the lights are in my opinion very convincing and still deliver at 1.5 meters distance although you may need to pump up the ISO.
I would think that with this angle of coverage a distance of 30” between the two lights is ideal with my rig this means two 8” segments however this may create ergonomic issues so I settled at 5 + 8 this gives an arm length of 21” and with the GH5 26” from centre. Considering a WWL-1 set up with the front of the lens 6” ahead this means shooting distances up to 1 meters from the front of the lens covering a frame width of around 3.5×2.0 m that is a huge surface.
After the pool test I noticed a number of scratches in the paint clearly the coating is not the same quality of more expensive lights.
Conclusion
Overall the lights have great performance in terms of power, beam distribution and are very well built with excellent autonomy. Issues to note and suggested remediation:
- The chargers that come with the lights are inadequate. A 2A charger would be better and would halve the charge time without damaging the battery pack, here some links for third party 16.8V/2A chargers:
- The clamp position creates an issue of pitch in water obviously if you manage to have some floatation system for the individual light this is no longer a problem.
- The light intensity adjustment is not effective and you can’t really tell if the two lights are set the same. Obviously this is only an issue if you need less than 9000 lumens for example for close shots. There is no easy solution to this problem other than controlling the two lights simultaneously.
Considering the price point and the quality this light competes with the Gates GT14 and the Keldan 8X and when it comes to power, CRI, autonomy and price beats them both in terms of durability and ergonomics they appear to be a level down but they are also less expensive.
Jaunt is setting up relationships with distributors in major markets and in UK there is already one so everybody should be able to get a set of lights. Depending on location, duties and import regulations the price will change but generally I have seen it remain competitive.
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