# H602w Zebra Light - 1020 Lumen PID Run time for Caving Documentary



## david2384 (Dec 23, 2013)

The H602W light from Zebra Lights says that it will run 2 Hours at 1020 Lumens on one lithium 18650 battery, but then there is a PID runtime limitation depending on temperature and air flow. (Caves run about 55 degrees here.) Does anyone know how long these lights take to limit themselves due to excessive heat? I may need to run the lights 30 - 45 minutes to set up and shoot more complicated shots. I was wondering if this light was too good to be true for what I need it for. 

http://www.zebralight.com/H602w-18650-XM-L2-Flood-Headlamp-Neutral-White_p_115.html

(The cave takes multi days to go through. So I need something light, small and efficient with interchangeable batteries. It has some rather large rooms and tall pits so I am guessing I will need a minimum of 4 of theses which makes price a concern. Waterproof and rugged is really helpful. If this light is too small to take the heat or anyone has any better options let me know.)


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## Mooreshire (Dec 24, 2013)

Hi David, and welcome to the forum! :welcome: Cave documentaries get me really exited! You'll have to forgive my long-winded half-off-topic response.

The quick answer is that as long as you put a high quality (powerful, high capacity) battery in it, the H602w will have no trouble running in 'high' for 45+ minutes. And, if the thermal stepdown does kick in (which might be unlikely in a cool damp cave) it will be subtle enough that you likely won't even notice it - perhaps dimming itself down to between 750-900 lumens or so but never any lower than is necessary to maintain a safe internal temperature.

I would just leave it at that, but you mentioned big rooms and deep pits and buying four identical lamps... here's where I might start to go off topic (sorry). :tinfoil:

Even if you buy four _or more_ H602w lamps they will* not *effectively illuminate a really big cave chamber or deep pit - the H602 is simply not designed to throw its light very far outwards.

High luminous flux in a wide-angled beam with no collimation will still produce a relatively low luminous intensity and thus the illuminance it can produce at a given distance will be relatively low as well, dropping down below usefulness very quickly as it's moved away from your subject. If you are not at least somewhat familiar with the intricacies of photometry and how it applies to flashlight beams as well as lighting design theory for film and video, you're probably going to want to do some research before you buy a handful of expensive lights. 

As a fellow cave documentary film maker, I can tell you that a few bare-diode wide-angle lights like the H602w will be an essential part of your subterranean video lighting kit - but you'll need lights that can throw further as well (and they might be quite a bit harder to source if you want them to project smooth clean light). The standard hotspot+spill configuration produced by cone-shaped or parabolic reflectors is usually not ideal for video by itself, often suffering from ugly uneven beams where you need smooth lighting without noticeable overlapping, shadows, borders, or color aberrations. I hate to say this, but you should be prepared to do a whole lot of experimenting and trial-and-error... if possible; _before _you bring your cameras underground. Lighting complex 3D spaces with multiple subjects at different distances is _hard_, and caver film-makers don't enjoy the usual toolbox that caver still-photographers have (long exposures, multiple exposures, light painting, etc.) and as often as not we're moving the camera around through the scene too. In a cave the usual three-point lighting techniques that are taught for flat-backdrop studio applications will quickly turn into six- and eight-point lighting arrangements, with those various different lighting stations requiring different beam shapes/angles.

These hideous pics of my dingy apartment hallway and bathroom were taken with a Panasonic HDC-TM700K camcorder with every setting on 'auto' - that means it's not about showing overall brightness as our eyes see it, but relative contrasts like a video camera sees it. Crude lux meter readings provided by my GS3 cellphone's light sensor -that's the important part assuming you know what the numbers mean. Distance to bathroom doorway is approximately twelve feet. Both lights are in their second brightest mode (their brightest "H2" option).First pic is of H602w @620 lumens - light meter reading at the bathroom doorway: only *11 lux*. The camera (known for good low light performance and a decent dynamic range) is trying hard but you'll notice that we still can't really tell what color the soap dispenser on the sink is. No problem lighting up both the door lock and the poster on the opposite wall though! Minor off-color ring around only the very outer boundaries of the beam. For everything BUT distance viewing, this arrangement seems ideal. The whole frame is lit, but anything out past twelve feet is almost too dim for the camera to render while the near-field is almost washed out.​







Second pic is of an older dimmer version (MK I?) of the H600w @ 360 lumens - light meter reading from the bathroom doorway: a whopping *106 lux*. _That's roughly ten times the luminance from only half the lumens!_ Soap dispenser is now clearly green in color. Unfortunately there is an ugly boarder between hotspot and spill, the angle is too tight to illuminate both the poster and the door lock, and there are noticeable color variations along the beam which wreak havoc with the white-balancing and end up looking pink on my off-white wall (it wouldn't be quite as bad on a non-white rock surface, but it still won't look quite right). For closeup filming, a collimated beam can be ruinous with its uneven beam, but for distance viewing some form of collimation is essential.​ 
Perhaps you can find some (potentially cheaper) lights that would be smoother and cleaner while still throwing a sufficient distance. Maybe instead of the H600w style textured reflector; an unfocussed aspheric lens, or a slightly-frosted TIR optic, or just try sticking some subtle diffusion film overtop. Sometimes I find myself combining a light with one optical arrangement with another utilizing a different setup, both pointing at the same subject from the same location, and playing with their respective outputs. That's the sort of experimenting you'll need to do. You might find that the optics that help the most next to a helmet-camera are not the same as the optics that work best set around a scene as part of a multi-point arrangement. I don't use my beloved Zebralights for videos any more because I've concluded that they make everything look flat and dull compared to other lights I've built (or commissioned other forum members to build for me) using other brands of less-efficient and less-bright but more-accurate diodes. 

I think that an H602w will serve you quite well - it just won't serve every purpose and if you bought four of them for video use but had no matching collimated options you would be quite disappointed.

Further conversations about video lighting (separate from questions about certain models of headlamps) might be better suited for our "The Dark Room" photo/video section here, but I couldn't resist offering some additional application-specific details. You may have already known much or all of what I said, but I didn't want you buying a set of "mule" style lights and then wondering why they seemed way dimmer than everyone else's lights when it came time to film a deep pit or massive room. We'd love it if you shared the techniques and equipment you end up utilizing with us (over in the aforementioned darkroom section of course). Good luck assembling your kit, and stay safe down there! :thumbsup:


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## tonkem (Dec 24, 2013)

Pricing not being a concern, you might look at the lupine headlamps, as the betty r headlamp can run at 1400 lumen (OTF) for 8 hrs with their largest capacity battery. Granted you will have to put the battery in a pocket, but that is not even the highest output. The Betty R has a thermal regulated max output of 4500 lumens(this is measured out the front). I have several lupines and they are great lights, I have the Lupine Piko X duo that is a great headlamp, but perhaps a bit underpowered for what you need, but it is still 1200 lumens on max power, with the same battery I mentioned above, at 1200 lumens it would run for 7 hrs, obviously it would run longer if you needed less light. They also have a model called the wilma that has a max output of 2800 lumens and is smaller than the betty, with only 4 leds, versus 7 on the betty. 

You can get more information from their website: http://www.lupine.de/products/headlights


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## yellow (Dec 24, 2013)

the model without any reflector at all is totally useless (except for - maybe - newspaper reading)
get a H600W, this model's beam a more than enough of wide flood
(as to be seen in the pics)


PS: the thermal safety of my old H600w neutral kicks in at about 3 mins of running, the new MKii model has not arrived yet ...
.. I would also consider these 3 mins


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## LEDburn (Dec 25, 2013)

yellow said:


> the model without any reflector at all is totally useless (except for - maybe - newspaper reading)
> get a H600W, this model's beam a more than enough of wide flood
> (as to be seen in the pics)
> 
> ...



The old one features a timed step down, hence the 3 minutes until the output is reduced.
The new one features true thermal management and doesn't step down with one big drop like the old one. Instead, it has many gradual drops in output as it gets too warm. I would say it follows a similar pattern to the new SC600 as seen in Selfbuilt's review here: http://www.candlepowerforums.com/vb...M-L2-1x18650)-Review-RUNTIMES-BEAMSHOTS-VIDEO


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## david2384 (Jan 7, 2014)

Sorry for the late reply. My notifications must have gone to junk mail. 


Thanks for your explanation Moreshire. I film a lot of docs above ground, but I am new to battery powered filming. I probably shouldn’t have taken on such a big project as my first cave doc, but where is the fun in that… 


From your pictures the H602w really does have a much shorter throw than I expected. I didn’t think there would be a fellow film maker on here. I worded my question with one of the 1000 lumen Zebra lights. (Not that I should assume they have the same heat run times.) I was thinking without my above ground grip and light control gear I should get 2 flatter H602w lights to avoid hot spots for close ups, fill, smaller passages and interviews. I was going to get 2 or 3 others like the H600w MkII’s for highlighting back ground objects. I also need a couple of spots for large passage, pits and back grounds. I was looking at the Nitecore Tiny Monster TM26 but it is so heavy and has the same vague heat step-down description. Not sure that is the way to go.
There are tons of options and a lot of them look like bad Chinese knock offs. 


Im still holding out remote hope for smaller lighter lights like the zebras, but from what you are saying maybe pre made lights aren’t the way to go. (Do they look bad on video even with some diffusion?) One of the guys I’m filming (electrical engineer) went on a caving expedition to J2 that the Discovery Channel filmed. The camera guys brought home made lights, and the electrical engineer put together lithium ion battery packs that fit in a Pelican 1300 Case (9x7x6”.) They are rather large and heavy. I was hoping to avoid those because of the super human expedition strength (or sherpas) it takes to pack them along. 


Thanks Tonkem - The Lupine lights look amazing. Now I have more to envy without funding. 


Thanks Yellow and LEDburn - I ordered one of the 602w’s but it was on back order. Just got it in today and charging the batteries. I will update times when I can test it.


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