My drone lighting project first video

Yes if it were not so darned cold here I would have stayed out longer and did some flying with a mixed set of 1 Fenix and 1 Sofirn in the saddle at the same time.

Yes, I personally like the Sofirn SP35 better. As mentioned above, try some D-C-Fix. Then again, you want stock lights.

+1

I’d want a super flooder light to cover as much as the field of view of the camera as possible, while keeping the lux on the ground just high enough for the camera to handle by jacking up the ISO. The hot spots are wasted light. They are blowing out the image at the lower heights at least, even with the two beams aimed apart. If you are searching the outdoors rather than just lighting up a known location, narrower hot spots are akin to searching a room using a laser pointer. Your flight pattern to fully cover a given area would take much less time if you weren’t searching with a narrow beam.

Entirely depends on the terrain though. In bush or dark green trees you need more light since less light it reflected. If you spread out the light too much it could be ineffective.

This is designed to be for sale, it needs to suit all locations, not just the snow where a lot of light is reflected.

all those movies have ‘hot spot blowout’
the light should have the same angle of even coverage, as the camera
period.
which just means you need more light or a narrower camera shot [tele/zoom]

Nice improvement with the wider spread and Sofirns greater lux/lumens I think results in a better image capture.

Note also snow is highly reflective, and most definitely does not represent the real world. You should run your tests in a wooded / shadowy area with no snow if you can. The results might change your thinking. Keep in mind this is not about what we can see… its’ about what image the onboard camera can capture.

Camera / video enthusiasts would cringe at all the digital / low light “noise” in those clips. With todays small CCD arrays and optics, this is pretty much inevitable. Low light image quality limits almost all compact, action-type cameras.

Good luck!! One things for sure, I would not want to be the guy trying to hide.

Yes, as I stated in video #1 additional tests need to be done in summer/fall with greens and browns and blacks but I live in the frozen tundra which means we wont have those conditions for a few more months. Around June I will have a very different landscape to work with.

Tir Lens beam is a cone of light, my preferred beam when using a camera
Surefire Weapons lights use TiR beams:

reflector beam has a hotspot and spill that create an overeposed hotspot, or two

A Clear TiR, designed for narrow forward focus, is by far better at producing an even field of lighting, for the way a camera sees illumination.

For camera lighting I choose this sort of beam with no hotspot (as in the Surefire above):

over this reflector beam

a few more images to show the difference between a Clear Focusing Tir, and a reflector:
Tir on left, reflector on right


Although the reflector lights being tested are working suprisingly well, despite the hotspot overexposure, and dim spill on camera. I want to mention that another advantage of an even field of illumination, is that the light can remain static longer, as the subject traverses the lighted area. With a hotspot light, there is considerably more active movement of the flashlight, to optimize the position of the hotspot and spill, as the subject moves.

Tir lenses are also more battery efficient, as they dont waste lumens on sidelighting.

Which other 18650 lights, besides the Surefire Weapons lights, offer a nice cone of light, without a hotspot? Is there an option from Fenix? (the brand has decent street cred among LEOs, outside of the more expensive, Made in USA brands such as Surefire, Malkoff and Elzetta)

If you’re careful then you could drill lots of holes in the aluminium body tubes and reduce the weight a bit. I would guess you could remove over half the body tube’s weight without it being a problem. I’ve never tried this myself but I don’t think it would affect the durability for your use case.

Just make sure to take the cell out first!

Sounds like a way to invite water.

I had the best results with aspheric optics when trying to film at night

I agree, this is one of my favorite aspheric lights, for close range photos:

however, because the drone is at 150 feet distance, he needs an aspheric that is zoomed the correct amount to illuminate, enough, but not too little and not too much, at that distance.

Narrow Focus, throwy Tir lenses, as on weapon lights, seem more widely available than aspherics.

Can you suggest any 18650 lights with aspheric lens suitable for 150 foot range?

This could be ideal as you could print a dial index on a zoomy for different focus levels based on planned elevation. Perfectly uniform beams in that case

Last time I shot at night I also found a TIR was the best option. I just used a small piece of pic rail screwed it to the cam mount and slid on a light adapter. An old malkoff M60 works best. It’s still a pretty tight focus though, but I like it because it’s just a wall of smooth light with a moderately floody spot in the middle. Its a Katod 8 degree optic, the 10~15 degree optic would be better though. I do get hot spot blowout at close ranges.
The 6P bezel is just small enough to stay outside the field of view. The foam on the front is the mic wind screen.

I’ve been thinking about upgrading though to a brighter neutral tint drop in. I like the 6P host and pic rail mount though.

Really cool setup kramer! Might do something like this for my GoPro

Have you ever though about something like a high end headlamp ? They tipically very small and light with a super high lumens density and multiple often customizable tir optics and a remote battery that could facilitate the distribution of the payload ?

something like this or that

Here is a zoomie (adjustable focus, not aspheric though, it uses a TiR),

I found a video

but after seeing the beam quality in flood mode, Im not impressed…

===

this is more what I had in mind, more lumens per dollar, but maybe not more lumens per gram…

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005001889112880.html

but the light is a noname brand

Really enjoyed this video - thank you!

That was a remarkably informative video.

Thanks for posting it :+1:

I should point out the real reason the trees are warmer than the snow, though:

Great video and impressive research. Looks like lots of fun !