Hello, right now im planning on a night crabbing trip and I am looking for a headlight that can shine through roughly 2 feet of water. I wanted to know if having a cooler or warm led would help more for seeing through the water. Also would having an headlight with more flood be more benefical?
neutral or warm light will usually penetrate water, fog and mists better due to their stronger colored beam where cool white would blast-back its white beam at you, alternatively red is also effective under certain conditions
If the surface of the water is going to be moving then you want a warmer tint for less scatter back at you. Unless the water is perfectly clear, as in no turbidity or murkiness then you’re probably going to want a warmer tint, again scatter. As for the beam pattern you’re going to want a fairly tight concentrated light. It does you no good to have a wide flood of light bouncing off of the water surface when your eyes are focused in one small area. I don’t think a headlight is going to be the best primary light. Are you going to be standing in this water or up in a boat? Unless there’s something about crabs that reflect a cooler light better,IDN.
I trust Armytek headlights for quality manufacturing including waterproofing and they do excellent warm tints.
I’m not sure if anyone makes what you need. Most of the IPX-7 or IPX-8 (highly water resistant) headlamps, in fact most headlamps in general, are floody. You want one with good throw, a tight spot beam. The only headlamp I can think of with a tight spot is LEDLenser’s variable adjustment headlamps, but they are not at all waterproof, only splash resistant.
Another consideration is, a light on your forehead will create a scatter of light right at your eye plane and make it hard to see through the glare. It will light up all the little particles right in front of your face. You also might have a tough time removing a face mask without first removing the headlamp, which could become a nuisance.
My thought is to buy a dive light, like the Wurkkos WK20, and devise a way to strap the light to your wrist. Then your hands will still be free but the light will be away from your face. And the WK20 has pretty good throw to punch through the water without too much obscuring scatter.
If you still prefer to wear something on the head, consider getting a Nite Ize flashlight holder. That will open up some choices of small flashlights with more throw than flood. nite ize holster on amazon
Warm light and polarized amber lens sunglasses ;))
Thrunite TH10 V2 has tight beam and excellent throw for a headlamp - about 4X that of similar 1x18650 “throwy” headlamps (ie reflector w/out optics, eg skilhunt H04R, nitecore HC30).