Strobes are a useful (I would call them essential) tool for divers. I never conduct a dive without at least one strobe and I usually have 2-3 on a dive. I think of strobes as the proverbial “bread crumbs” to find your way home.
I almost always put one on the “down line” to a site to help orient and find my way back to the line for my ascent and decompression. I have used them in caves and wrecks to mark a position. I also use them to mark a “rich gas” bailout cylinder that I might leave outside a wreck.
I have quite a few Big Blue video lights that I use for deep water photography and videos so I was excited when they announced that they were introducing a new strobe.
The key to a good strobe is that is has to be bright and it has to flash for a potentially long time.
On my recent exploratory dives, I took a newly introduced Big Blue strobe to test it out.
It was really bright.
On the video below, I was 200 feet deep in conditions that were probably 20-30 feet of visibility and I could clearly see the light that I placed on the downline from at least 50-60 feet away. I probably could have seen the light from 100′ feet away. It is very bright.
Overall, I definitely recommend the new Big Blue strobe. The “pros” are that it is very bright, it is built very well and can stand the abuse of a wreck diver and a deep diver, and it uses a “standard” 18650 battery which most of my other lights use. About the only downside is that it is more expensive than other strobes that I have, but you pay for quality.
Disclosure: I was not paid by Big Blue for this post. Big Blue provided Tyler Stalter with a couple strobes for testing and he gave me one of them for these dives.
Cool…didn’t realize how dark it is when you are down there. Do you have “headlamp” on the whole time?
Yeah, California water is generally “dark” when you get to any depth. Some tropical places are much brighter that deep.
Divers usually always take at least one primary and one backup light on deeper dives. The primary is usually mounted on your hand and is switched on during the descent and usually switched off when you start the ascent or when you get to the first deco stop.
Because I use video lights for taking my photos, those are on for most of the dive and act as my primary light source and I have a backup light in my pocket.
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