ORCATORCH D530 Scuba Dive Light, 1300 Lumens, 8 Degrees Narrow Beam Angle, Titanium Alloy Side Button Switch, 2 Lighting Modes, with Battery Indicator, for Underwater 150 Meters Diving

We had a older dive light that included UV as a sort of secondary emitter. It illuminated fluorescent objects pretty well but left us wondering about the "OH WOW" comments we'd read from others about UV night dives.Then we noticed that OrcaTorch was offering a new UV light, the D530UV. We'd had good experiences with other OrcaTorch lights and thought perhaps it could improve our UV night diving, so we bought one via Amazon and it arrived in a few days.First, the packaging is very good indeed. Amazon ships it in a exterior cardboard box. Inside that is a white OrcaTorch box (photo 1) and inside THAT is a very nice hardside zipper case for the light and its accessories (photo 2).Needless to say, the light is very well protected!When you unzip the hardside case, you're greeted by the light itself, a 3400mAH battery, a USB charging cable, a wrist lanyard, spare o-rings, and documentation (photo 3). The USB charging cable is meant to be used with the USB port on the side of the battery (visible in the photo above). This is a recent trend in rechargeable batteries where charge-management circuitry is built right into the battery itself. The convenience is unquestionable, but personally I prefer to use an AC powered multicell charger that gives me control over charge rate and allows me to monitor things. For minimalist travel, though, the OrcaTorch battery is hard to beat.The light unscrews mid-body to access the battery compartment (photo 4). It is sealed by three o-rings which come pre-greased from the factory, with three spares included. The light is rated to 150 meters, well past recreational depths.The light body also has an orange "grip ring" made of grippy elastomer. At first we thought this was purely decorative, but during use it really did help to keep the otherwise smooth-exteriored light oriented in your hand.The light has a single user control - a pushbutton, by far our favorite type of light control. Twist ring switches can trick you into accidentally unscrewing and flooding the battery compartment. The D530UV button is pressed once for full brightness, a second time for roughly half brightness, and a third time to turn it off again. While the light is on the button has an LED indicating the charge state of the battery. Anything other than green or orange means you're getting low on charge.I've always questioned the use of battery status LED's, since they report how much your battery is discharged by discharging it faster! A better approach might be to flash the indicator 1-5 times indicating charge states of 20-100%. The resulting lower duty cycle would consume less power while conveying more detailed information. Thankfully, in this case it's probably not a big deal since the primary LED is consuming probably two orders of magnitude more current than the button LED.One more technical detail before we get to the underwater photos. The D530UV's wavelength is specified as 395nm, which is theoretically on the edge of human vision. However, LED's are not perfectly monochromatic and the human eye doesn't have brick-wall wavelength response. The result is that you can indeed see "blue" light when the D530UV is turned on, but the light you're seeing isn't the total intensity of the UV being emitted.On to what matters: Underwater UV performance! Our next night dives are a couple of months away and we wanted to evaluate the DS530UV ahead of that trip in case it didn't perform as expected. Lacking any naturally fluorescing flora and fauna in our dive tank, we found four children's toys at a local big box store in fluorescent colors (we insured they were truly fluorescent using the DS530UV in the store!). We glued those to a piece of wood, laid it on the bottom of the tank, and held it in place with dive weights. Then we killed the tank lights to create our own private night dive.Photos were taken with an Olympus TG-6 dive camera, which has a smaller objective lens so light gathering (and thus focus) isn't as good as your own eyes.The next photo (#5) is the scene with all light extinguished. You can just barely make out our four little "targets".Our older UV light has a constant-density beam. The new D530UV has a flood pattern with a hotspot in the center. This makes it difficult to compare them directly, but we can get close by comparing the old light with the annular ring of the DS530UV's flood pattern. Our old light presented the image in photo #6.Photo #7 is what the new D530UV generated - with just its flood edge! And this is on the LOW setting.The D530UV's high setting was overpowering for reasonable testing in the tank's crystal-clear water. The high setting might be more useful in ocean water with less clarity, or perhaps to illuminate reef walls at double-digit distances, but if you're at all close to the target(s) you can easily switch to low power and double your battery life. All D530UV photos here are with its low power setting. Honest.The next photo is the D530UV's hotspot directed at an object that fluoresces in the yellow-green portion of the spectrum. Following that is an object in the red portion of the spectrum. In both photos you can see the flood ring illuminating the tank bottom, and the edges of the hotspot around the object in question. There's a lot of UV here.When discussing lights, especially those with hotspots, collimation is another figure of merit. Collimation refers to the parallelism, or collinearity, of the sides of a light beam. Most beams are cone shaped, meaning they spread with greater distance. Better hotspots have high collimation so they maintain a smaller, tighter spot even at greater distances.The next photo is a side shot of the beam from the D530UV, with the hotspot illuminating an object. Note the excellent collimation. That spot will not spread too much with distance, meaning it will continue to be useful for objects farther away - especially if you kick it up to full power.Up next is a side shot of the beam with the hotspot away from the objects. The beam is intersecting the tank bottom at an angle, so the hotspot appears elliptical. The flood patterh around the hotspot is very obvious here. Note that the flood pattern's edge is well defined... the available light doesn't just fade away around the edges, and the intensity of the flood pattern is pretty constant across its cross-section area. This is excellent optic design.The final photo is a nearly straight-on shot against the far wall of the tank so we can analyze the overall light pattern. The color variation between the hotspot and the flood pattern does not appear this way to your eye. I suspect the camera's sensor was being tricked by the combination of UV and fluorescence, with the much higher intensity of the hotspot affecting the area immediately surrounding it. To the eye there isn't an annular "ring" aroundthe hotspot like the camera suggests. It's a hotspot surrounded by a constant brightness flood pattern.Everything has room for improvement, so if we could suggest one update it would be to include a white emitter in the same dive light. First button press could be full power white, second could be half power white, third could be full power UV, fourth could be half power UV, and fifth (or hold for a couple of seconds) could be off. This would be a single light that could serve as a primary dive light day or night. Toss a small backup light in a pocket for night dives and you'd be set for anything.In summary, the D530UV is our new favorite UV tool. It's a single-purpose dive light; it does not have any white emitters so it cannot be your only light. But for specialized UV diving purposes it's the best we've seen so far. It's packaged well, very rugged, includes the necessary accessories, all at an excellent price. We highly recommend OrcaTorch and their new D530UV!

Holy cats this thing is bright. I can’t wait to get it in the water and do some photography with UV illumination.

The media could not be loaded. D530:Overview: I recently picked up an Orcatorch D530 to replace my old backup dive light. I wanted something more powerful than the typical 800-1000 lumen dive lights on the market. Also something with a clear and defined tight spot.The D530 stood out as a modern take on some of the old designs I have seen. I’m used to twist activated lights so this was my first into a button-activated backup. Also, its claimed 3000 lumens had me intrigued.So how did the D530 do?In the case: It comes with spare o-rings, a lanyard, a single 3400MAH OrcaTorch branded battery, USB C charging cable, an instruction manual, warranty card. (Boltsnap shown not included)Build and design: It’s built tough. The overall quality feels durable and solid in hand.The button design lends itself to ease of one-handed use.The threading is square cut and screws together with ease.The D530 uses a smooth reflector, which helps with beam distance and defined spot.The ribbing and branded rubber band look great and provide plenty of grip.Depth Rated 150m IXP-8142mm x 35.5mm x 25.5mmThe button has an LED that indicates the battery level.Green is >70%Orange is 70-30%Red is 10-30%Flashing Red is <10%Power and charging: It’s powered by a mid-sized 3400 MAH 18650 battery. The light includes USB C charging cable. No dedicated battery charger is required.Reverse polarity Protection.Over-discharge protection functionSimple: The light is intuitive and easy to use. Simply click on and click off. From off, one click of the tail switch will bring you to high mode. Another tap will bring you to the low setting.User Interface: * High 1300 Lumens with 1 hour 25 min runtime* Low 380 Lumens with 4 hours 30 min runtimeButton Lock Feature: Holding the button for five seconds locks the button. Two quick pushes unlock the light for use.Attachment points: Options for securing. There is a single attachment point on the tail of the light. You can use the provided lanyard or in my case, a 316SS Boltsnap secured with #24 cave line.The Boltsnap was not included with the D550 but Orcatorch does offer one for purchase separately called the SH02 Boltsnap Hook.Beam: The Cree XHP70 2.0 emitter creates a medium-sized throwy 8-degree hotspot with plenty of usable spill around it at degrees.1300 claimed lumens on highMax Runtime 4 hours 30minCRI rated 925700k Kelvin color spectrumFinish: Strong anodizing. The finish shows little wear after multiple dives.Final Thoughts:Pros:-Powerful and high sustainable outputs-Good kelvin color spectrum for underwater use.-High color rendering index (CRI) rating at 92-Throws light beam very far away-Solid build quality-Good Size-On/Off button for easy one-handed use.-8-degree spot and 70-degree halo make for a useful combination.s-Includes one 18650 3400 MIH battery and USB C charging cable.-USB C battery makes for simple charging without needing a dedicated charger.-Long Runtime allows for multiple dives before needing a recharge.-Bright enough to serve as a primary light in warm clear water recreational dives-Smooth reflector makes for a bright spot.-Good valueCon’s:-A 21700 5000MIH battery would be more efficient and add very little increased diameter. It would increase the capacity by 1600MIH over the 18650 the D530 uses.-No Strobe Feature-It's theoretically possible the button is activated or affected by pressure at depth. No issues to date.-Button designs are potentially less watertight than twist-on designs.