Salvo Rebel 12 W LED review / opinion

This page contains my opinions of the Salvo 12 W LED canister light. I am putting this information on line since I couldn't find much in terms of testing before I ordered it. I am not in any way a light professional and I don't have access to proper light meters so I cannot provide any hard numbers on the output. What I can do is to provide my own thoughts and experiences with the light.

First, the cannister is very small and very light. There is no problem mounting it on a back plate or on the webbing of a harness, it will not be in the way or feel heavy. In fact, I will try to mount it under my Ikelite housing at some stage for night dive photography and see how that works. The light feels very solid. Since there are no parts to open apart from the light head for recharging it all looks like a light that will last many years and the LED will not break easily either so overall, a solidly crafted package set to last for a long time with minimum maintenance. I will need to use the light for a while before being certain about the quality of the steel etc. but it all looks good.

Some facts:

Battery pack, 5.2 Ah Li-Ion
Burn time, 5 h
Output, 750 Lumen
Temperature, 5600 K
Cannister weight, 1.1 kg
Cannister size, 19 cm x 5 cm (diam)
LED manufacturer, Ostar




Light beam:

When switching the light on I was surprised at how much light was leaking outside the 6 degree beam listed on the Salvo site. Personally, I don't mind since I believe this will just help illuminate the reef around me and help me spot interesting critters. However, it also means the output is not concentrated on the spot so people who want a strict pencil beam for wreck diving etc. may get a bit disappointed.

The picture above shows the 6 degree spot in the center and the surrounding illuminated ring. In my opinion, the surrounding ring should be bright enough to illuminate a reef quite well (compared with my old c4 1 W LED torch). The photo is very much underexposed to bring out the center spot.

The below picture shows the spread from the light head. The head is about 50 cm from the wall and the large ring about 1m in diameter which shows that there is quite a large illuminated area. The camera can't separate the spot from the outer ring in the photo since the illuminated area is completely overexposed and all highlights are clipped. Also, this photo shows better than the top photo how bright the outer ring is.



In order to get a feel for how strong the torch is, I put it next to my backup torch, a Salvo Rat 3 W LED. Now, when I got the Rat I thought that was really good with a beam that went far in under ledges and nice bright light. As can be seen from the photo below, the Rebel on the right copletely kills the Rat on the left. It is hard to see in the photo but there is a wider ring around the rat spot as well but compared with the Rebel it is almost invisible. The two torches were placed side by side about 1m from the wall in the photo.



In the Water

I went diving with the torch for the first time on July 16. My immediate reaction was that the light was very bright. Greg brought his old 20 W halogen cannister light and at first I thought he was running low on batteries when he turned it on and after having seen the Salvo on. For Sydney divers who are familiar with Bare Island in order to get a feel for how bright it is, it clearly illuminates the fort on Bare Island from the boom gates (200-250 m).

I tried to take some photos from under water but it was impossible to hold the torch and take meaningful photos. Since the light source was so close to the camera all I got was a coplete whiteout from the beam, backscatter and nothing of the target wall. However, if looking at the photo below one can see the sand bottom and get an idea of the light spread. The torch would have been about 1 m above the sand at this point.



The torch is brilliant for reef diving. As I suspected the outer ring illuminates a wide area enough to see the night critters so as you dive, fairly much the entire field of vision is lit up decently. The center spot is strong enough to penetrate deep into caverns and light up the insides of caves. It was difficult to tell how far the torch penetrates since this is dependent on some quantifiable measure of visibility and particles in the water at the time. However, the reach was much further than the halogen spot (focusable).