Hello from new UV enthusiast/commercial user

Introduce Yourself
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Hi all,

Have entered the world of enthusiast flashlights via r/flashlight - a couple of months ago, I knew little about flashlights. Now, I still know very little, but have a better idea just how much I don’t know!

I live in Coober Pedy, Australia, a remote outback town, famous for opals, a precious gem, which fluoresces under UV 365 nm light.

Mid-April, when I come back from an interstate trip, I’ll be launching a blacklight rental service for opal hunting tourists who come to town. I’m also working on developing the best UV thrower I can, with the help of u/Sakowuf_Solutions. This is more tailored to professional opal miners, who like to be able to sit on their excavator, dig/scrape around a bit, then inspect the new area for opals. The model recommended around town when I arrived was an EagTac MX30L3/MX30L3-C, tailored by EagTac before shipping to use 6 x UV leds in its usual mini-reflectors. These are still the best I’ve seen in use, with the 6 x very throwy beams forming a decently sized hotspot and a visible light spill (no ZWB2s), which some miners like, for extra safety when walking about. Due to high failure rate of these lights, though, I can’t recommend them to anyone else. In chatting with Eagtac via AE, they advised an improved model is about to hit the Australian reseller, with better thermal management, so that’s promising. I still want to outperform them with my own custom light, so will be tinkering with DIY options and continuing strategising with Sakowuf, who’s been a great mentor thus far!

An alternative budget UV thrower for now, is the M21A from Simon - it throws as far as the EagTacs, but with only the single emitter and big reflector. I’ve got a bunch more of these being delivered, so will experiment with binding a few together and seeing how many are needed to outperform the EagTacs :slight_smile:

For the tourists, currently, S12s are looking like a decent bang for buck option, with nice flood and enough throw to be used walking around, looking for opals on the ground, or while digging through heaps of mined material, looking for any that glows blue. They then take all this potential opal material back to their hotel or switch to a white headlamp and see whether it has any pretty opal colours in it - that may have value, else, it’s termed “potch opal” or “common opal”, which still has some bulk price, especially for the Indian market at the moment. I’m going to buy a 1 kg or so “parcel” of this potch from a local miner, which I’ll give out for demonstrating to tourists what it is they’re looking for. Else, the tourists are prone to pick up anything which looks bright under UV light, vs actual fluorescing material.

I’ve got a few UV models at the moment:

  • EagTac MX30L3-C
  • Convoy S2
  • Convoy S2+ Nichia
  • Convoy S12
  • Convoy C8
  • Convoy M21A
  • Convoy L6 custom UV from Sakowuf, my preferred noodling light
  • Hank D4K 8 x 5w mule
  • AE button battery keychain UV lights (will probably give away to customers/friends, also keep one on my keychain until my Boruit V3 comes in)
  • and some crappy AE/Amazon jobs from before I knew better

On top of this, I’m also wanting good headlamps to rent out, so have one red/white DW2 I’m loving and EDC’ing and ordered a bunch of HD15Rs, thanks to Wurkkos’ Easter sale, a reddit user informed me of. The plan was to use red moonlight mode to provide a bit of safety light while walking around and switch to a nice white light to show if the opal has colour or not. As of yesterday, Hank’s D2 dual channel opens up an option for me to have a smaller headlamp with white + 400+ nm purple vs red for affecting their 365 nm blacklighting less and being a bit less risky for shining in each others eyes, even though I’m providing them polycarbonate safety glasses to reduce the UV risk. Price-wise, it’s not that different than the DW4, so may stick with those, or just the HD15Rs if their moonlight works well with the S12 blacklights. For professional miners, a white + 365 nm combo may be very nice!

Along with those, I’m slowly building up my personal, non-UV lights, such as:

  • Convoy L21A XHP70.2 5000k: Can’t remember why I bought it, but good to have my first bright white light
  • Convoy T2: mostly to get a 14500 battery for my ordered D3AA (red, red, red config)
  • Convoy S6 host (to swap my S2+ Nichia components into)
  • Boruit V3 - for my keychain: handy to have an extra UV 365 nm on me and a glowing case for a bit of fun

Loving this new addiction, full of learning and adventures. The community is great, too, thanks! I’m mostly on reddit so far, but will try to spend more time here and dip my toes into CLF, too.

Cheers,

Leon

7 Thanks
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I hope you have fun here, ljsdotdev!
Have you seen this Sofirn UV light?

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Cheers! I don’t have any Sofirns (yet!).

Looking at their SF16, SP31, etc UV options, I’m not sure they’ll outcompete the smaller Convoys for my opal hunting needs, where generally looking for good flood over a few metres or throw over a long distance. I’ll keep an eye out for some of the UV mods people have done here in larger Sofirns.

I’m also learning that controlled tests within a reflective room aren’t the same as trying to fluoresce some opal metres away on the ground outside or inside an underground mine. I’d gotten excited about a few lights, only to take them to my neighbours cave and find they couldn’t charge up the opal ~5 metres away as well as some stronger throwers. As opal will “charge” or hold fluorescence for 1 or 2 seconds after some strong UV 365 nm hits it, a technique is to blast an area with UV, then turn the light off and see if anything continues to glow - this will be the opal. I’m also finding doing that process watching through my phone screen can be easier than with my eyes.

I’ll definitely want to try every type of UV light and as my range grows, it gets more helpful to be able to do relative comparisons.

There was a discontinued SF32UV, it seems, which had a Nichia UV emitter and would have been interesting to compare with the S2+ Nichia UV. There’s a good chance someone in town has some Sofirn UV models and I’ll try to at least test them, if not purchase them :slight_smile:

If they had a model with multiple UV emitters at a comparable price range to the Convoy S12 UV (which just got a refresh with buck/boost driver improvement), I’m definitely interested in good models from any makers in that range!

Thanks again for the welcome and please feel free to ping me anytime you see cool UV lights!

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Oy! That’s moine! :joy:

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I got the '32 as well. Not a fan of an unfiltered Nichia, as it still has that eerie ghostly greenish glow that looks like a throwy light on moonlight when shining it. The '16 is nice and throwy, but the come-with filter works wonders on it. And it’s intense enough to light up a wider area but farther out.

And yeah, I got the Convoy, swapped the black/gray host for a purple one, added a filter. Really nice, too. They all have different use-cases, is all.

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Hi Leon, I tested several UV flashlights a couple years ago here: We tested the best UV flashlights of 2024! | 1Lumen reviews | Blacklight flashlights but this year I will be redoing this, with new UV flashlights. Some of your lights are on my list as well, including the Sofirn SF16, . Plus a load of others.
I didn’t know that about Opal, so I might have to see if I can find a stone that I have… somewhere. And might include that in my test.
I visited your town in 2004 :smiley: … long time ago

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Oh, great to hear from the reviewer, hi!

Are you able to rank this, in terms of throw, with any of the Convoys I’ve got, to give me some relative idea?

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Great to meet someone here who’s been to this this remote little town! Could you please share your details of the visit? Did you get to blacklight on that trip?

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Great to hear of any UV light shootouts, keen to see what’s on your next list!

My test of interest would be lighting something up at greatest distance and seeing how long it remains glowing. Simple video from phone could help comparing this.

As mentioned, only light of mine that could compete with the EagTac 6 x emitter for that distance was the M21A, C8 wasn’t near it. And the EagTacs all had quality issues.

If you could compare some other $$ ones, like the Yooperlites Aurora (Yooperlites AURORA 365nm UV Flashlight w/ Active Cooling Technology), that would be great to see (and save me having to buy to find out!).

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Not really. The Convoy is nice and floody. The Sofirns are throwy. Depends what you want and need. Other than that, 365nm is 365nm. Filtered, of course, which 2 of the 3 have.

Plus there’s the Lumintop which is a 14500 light with filter and diffuser as well.

All good lights, I just pick the “right” one for whatever I want to do, like picking up a steak knife vs butter knife, etc.

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I have a UV meter, but haven’t used it in my previous review. I don’t know the actual numbers in terms of throw, but I would like to use the UV meter in my next UV roundup. From my experience (not testing) my Convoy C8 is likely the farthest throwing of the ones I tested. And I don’t think I have any multi emitter UV light, except for the cheapy 51 5mm UV light.
I’ll have to reach out to Yooperlites, as I have never heard of them. The review will not be focusing on a certain use case, but on several.

I have the Lumintop Tool UV on the list, amonst many others. I’m also talking to Simon from Convoy, about some UV lights that I don’t have yet.

About Cooper Pedy… that was 20 years ago, when I only had a very cheapo keychain light to my availability. No UV flashlights :smiley: Traveled most of Australia. It was my dream-trip, and some of my best memories are from that time… Visited Cooper Pedy for 1-2 days I think, on my way to Alice Springs, and Ayers Rock. We visited Opal stores, and an underground church from what I can remember. And there was still a prop used in one of the star wars movies (I’m not into Star Wars, so can’t remember what it exactly was…some sort of flying thing… haha). Founds a small Opal stone in the wild (tiny, not worth much).

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Great to hear you had a wonderful Aus trip! This is probably the spaceship, from “Pitch Back”, released in 2000:

Other films shot here were Mad Max and Priscilla. Last year, some reality TV show with a bunch of B-list stars, called Stars on Mars, was shot here. When they shut down the set, they sold off a bunch of their props to us town folk :slight_smile:

Great you found some opal, regardless of value! If ever back this way and for any other flashaholics, I’ll be delighted to take you out blacklighting and trying out all of these toys!

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That thing looks like it! I sent a message to Yooperlites… let’s see if they want to collaborate. Thanks for the tip

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Awesome! I think I sent them a message last week, asking some pre-purchase questions on emitters or such. They were out of stock of Aurora a few weeks ago, but now replenished. Design may be borrowed from a brand called Wild-something

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Most of the flashlights in the UV world can be bought with different names. They don’t necesarrily need to be the exact copy, but still often they are the same. So far, no response yet…
That’s okay, I already ordered more than 10 UV flashlights in total… and still talking with several companies

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Heya Leon,

We chatted over on reddit — I really loved your photos, and was daydreaming about them becoming a film! You were very generous with posting photos and talking about Coober Pedy and opals and films.

Just a totally uninformed question, mostly curiosity, but I also know sometimes people with training and experience miss “beginner” thoughts that sometimes end up being gamechangers . . . is UV different enough in wavelength that you could run a red emitter at the same time as a UV emitter and be able to see OK enough to move around safely, without compromising the UV charging of the opals? Like a Noctigon K9.3 with 9 UV emitters and 3 red, both run at the same time?

I am super curious about all of this!

[editS to fix fatfinger typing]

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PS

Did you see the introduction post from @rusty1 ?

Rusty included a link to a flashlight that allows selection of different UV wavelengths.

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UV fluorescence works because minerals/chemicals/?elements/ absorb highish energy UV which causes electrons to get “excited”. When they fall back to their starting energy, they release the “extra” energy in the form of visible light.

This process is happening continuously, to millions (billions?) of the electrons in whatever thing you’re shining the UV on.

The emitted energy is obviously pretty weak, the reason we like to cut out visible light is it “washes out” the fluorescence. These minerals/chemicals/etc that are UV reactive, all flouresce in daylight due to the natural UV, it’s just that we can’t see the interesting colours because there is so much visible light which completely overwhelms the weak energy given out by the florescence.

If you were looking for red fluorescence, your idea wouldn’t work, but it might work if you’ve got a specific colour you’re looking for, that isn’t read. Realistically, unless something is displaying really really weak florescence, a dim white light would be fine to move around with.

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I’m assuming they’re switching the machine lights off while looking with UV? How about excavator mounted UV light? I’d have thought it would be pretty easy to mod those multi-LED vehicle work lights to UV instead of white. My only concern would be the widespread use of plastic optics which block the UV.

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What is known about the Lumintop Tool UV? How does it compare to Sofirn SF16?

Both have proper filters. Not sure about the LEDs. Cost the same, I think. Do you happen to have both?