MJ 850 Divelamp second life

After a couple of years of intensive use the divelight is getting much worse... the batterylife I had at the beginning was about 6 - 7 dives without recharge when using it on setting 1 or 2 during the dives.

Now I have replaced the old accu's by new Li-Ion versions. Rechargable, faster to load, constantly delivering maximum power... and just 1 drawback: because of the accutype the batterylevelindicator does not work.

Left: the new accu's. right: the old ones.

Notice the great work they did at http://www.accudokter.nl/ on adding the little welded knobs on top. The light is now working like a charme, again. I will be using it during our next Zeelandweekend to really put it to the test again.

AT-810 - new and improved

Myself, I own a 850... but if this coolness would have been available when I bought the lamp, I might have reconsidered.

Ever since I have had my problems with the 850 I have commented with the production company on my desire to have a diffusor on it... so I can take better pictures. Well, in China they listened.

The new AT-810 concept, similar to the previous version has 750 lumen and is hardly changed. Except for one thing: the optional screw-on diffusor.

I have not ordered this lamp yet as I do have a lamp already but I would love to test this. I might just slip in an order for one or two samples. (anyone interested?)

The below pictures are made by the company themselves in a first show of the solution. Simple and effective, I think.

The lamp

Comparing between the old and the new:

The new lamp with diffusor:

The team in China say they have built the lamp with the original glass remaining, and adding an extra layer of glass that is either frosted or plain. I wonder if it would be doing ok with the heat dissipation with this setup.. but I guess most of the heat is transferred by the metal casing anyway.
On the plus side of this... we might be able to easily include a filter between the two sheets of glass as well.

Canon Powershot G12 and WP-DC34 - leak

This was my first holiday with my new Canon Powershot G12 - The camera performed very well. Yet I have had BIG problems with the housing. At the moment I am preparing to send the housing to the dealer, as it has caused me much grief.

On my 5th dive with this housing, the one where I shot the video of the turtle, I noticed the housing started leaking. I could not believe my eyes... several droplets at the bottom of the new underwaterhousing. On this long, shallow dive about the last third of the dive I have been in stress on if the thing was going to flood or if it was going to be save.

At 17 meters max depth there was absolutely no reason for this to happen and as I had been using similar housings from Canon since 2004/5 (with the great Ixus 430) I could not imagine user error...

I returned to shore washed and cleaned the housing opened it and removed and dried the camera as fast as I could. Finally a lucky brake, no water inside the camera .. only a few drops on it.

After the whole housing was dry enough, I cleaned it some more, checked everything for possible damage, did not find anything... and decided to take the housing with me on the next dive. No leakes on the first two dives, so I decided to have the camera in the housing. Next two dives, still no issue, I was able to take some pictures again.

Then, again, leaks .. just about 5 drops. No problem with the camera, cleaned the housing, tested it again .. no issue, rinsed and repeated... after a few dives .. exactly the same issue. This lasted until my last dive in Egypt.

The WP-DC34 is now on it's way to the dealer. I took about 450 pictures, about 800 less than normal. I still won't trust this housing, probably not even when it is repaired.

update: 5-5-11
Today I received the mail that Canon has sent me a replacement for the housing, under warranty arrangements. I guess they came to the same conclusion: there must be something wrong with the housing... I cannot wait to test the new housing this weekend (if it arrives on time) Great, THANKS CANON, GOOD service!

The MJ850 in a coma?!

So I returned from my dive holiday (which was great!) with a defective MJ850 torch.

How and what happened
During my last nightdive on the liveaboard, I had a buddy with me that was not really too confident in nightdives. I decided that if I would use my light, set to maximum power, it would be a bit easier for the buddy to dive.

Setting the MJ850 to 100% power creates blind fish, atrackts lionfishes from 200m distance and burns holes in coral. It is that bright! Until this dive I had been using the minimum setting, still overpowering all the other divelamps of the team.

Seeing the light it produced I decided to throttle back a bit to the medium setting, and since this was the last dive onboard decided at the end of the dive to reset to maximum power for the last 15 minutes of the dive or so... I had not tested the lamp that much, yet.

Nearly back at the boat (the MY Rosetta) the light suddenly dimmed to something comparable to my backup. Returning to the boat the 5% light is more than enough, as the Rosetta uses it's floodlights during the nightdives. Initial thoughts: the batteries must finally have reached a minimum level. (I actually recharged the batteries only once during this trip... and only because I figured not to trust the battery indicator.)

Back on board I was not able to turn the MJ850 off. It remained on, in emergency power setting, during the fresh water soak.

Resulting in
The MJ850 is now, still, burning at 5% emergency power as soon as I reconnect the batteries. I tried the obvious... shaking it a bit, leaving it on for a while, turning the magnetic switch ring to all different settings possible. Still no solution.

The aftermath
I am now in a mail/msn discussion with the company in China, to see if I can send this lamp for repairs. With no real foothold in Europe for the company, this will obviously be an expensive exercise for me and for them... hoping I can trust the repairs to be made and the lamp to be returned in time for my next dives.

Anyway .. the answer to my earlier questions on Scubaboard: MJ850 cheap. Too good to be true? might now actually be answered... cheap! and too good to be true (at least if the warranty and service does not really work out.)

The new lamp: MJ-850

After years of waiting, after months of searching for a light and after weeks of checking the internet and comparing offers... I went for the CHEAP solution. (It might well be an expensive solution in the end, though... but I'll keep you informed on that.)

The past years I have been hiring and borrowing lights when I needed them. especially when I went on a diveholiday I depended on that. I managed to use a 35 Watt Halogen Magnum most of the time and was pretty pleased by the light it gave. I normally use it for standard spotting but for photographing as well. Then a Halogen lamp still shines! It has great colorspectrum, including much of the hard needed reds and other low-spectrum colors. So my challenge was to find something suitable to replace it... for a budget that was quite minimal, as I also needed to get me a new camera and underwaterhousing. I think I might have succeeded.

The MJ-850 is a cheap lamp, known under many names (MagicShine and others). The common name in the dive fora is Ugly Light. The divelight is produced, as far as I know by Minjun in China and is a 1200 Lumen light, with a SST-50 light source. It uses 5.5Ah Li-Ion batteries and should go 100m deep.

Despite the name and the many posts on flooding the lamp or any types of the lamp family, I bought this just because it is cheap and I have 2 backups. Besides that, if you check the internet you'll find a posting on any lamp type being flooded. This divelight is so very cheap that I thought I just needed to take the risk.

First impressions, on receiving the lamp:

it is quite nicely packaged in a box, containing all the essential stuff, including:
the light itself,
batteries,
charger,
charging tube,
spare o-rings,
wristcord.

Upon closer inspection, the wristcord will be removed asap, replacing it with something more usefull. The bottom cap contained quite a rough thread, as well.

Now, the problem is that it is winter in Holland. So, I do not really have an opportunity to go and dive with this lamp. I went to our local swimmingpool and played around with camera and lamp. I mostly used a lower setting 1/3th power. I had a great dive at 2m max depth but that is no substitute for a real dive. The divelight can be seen in action on this video taken in Norway by Singerii. A review on what is in the box when you receive it can be found on youtube as well. (but you have to be good in foreign languages..)

When I have half a chance I will post a proper review on the lamp. The idea was to take this lamp on my journey to Egypt, at the end of March... but I am not so sure this will happen, with regards to the current instability.

I will also update this post with more information and pictures.