Exposure Lights Capture: The Compact LED Light To Enhance Your Adventures
Wed 9th Nov, 2016 @ 9:30 am
Looking for a lightweight, portable, extremely versatile LED light with GoPro compatible batteries? Enter the world’s 1st Graphene LED light. High power, variable beam angle, lightweight for life. For Scuba, GoPro, Bike, Skate, Surf, DSLR, Drone…
The CAPTURE light is the world’s first LED light to use the amazing properties of Graphene. Compact, lightweight and versatile, the Capture is designed for use with action cameras and as a general lighting solution. It has been researched, designed, tested and will be built in the United Kingdom.
The Capture project is fueled by a need for continued exploration into the night, and the increasing desire to record the adventure which is made ever easier through advancing Action camera technology and innovations such as drones. Over the years we have spent a lot of time filming, most often with inappropriate lighting, trying to ‘capture a product’ or simply ‘acting the hero’. From ocean voyages to skate parks, they all require a lightweight, tough, waterproof light to match and support the functionality of your film setup.
We are Exposure Lights, a collection of British Engineers, designers and manufacturers who share a common passion for outdoor sports. Cycling, sailing, skateboarding and diving to name a few of the activities that drive us to produce innovative lighting solutions, allowing us, and many others to continue our adventures into the night.
With years of experience in the cycle industry our designs are driven by our desire to take sports and filming to the next level. Based in the South Downs National Park in the South of England, we are proud to take products from concept to manufacture in the UK.
The specification was relatively simple, a light to seamlessly attach to your existing setup that enhanced the use of action cameras to generate quality footage. Think of your action camera and all of the places you dream of using it but poor light makes the results unusable.
However, fulfilling the specification was not as easy as their conception.
It is very important that LED’s are run at as low a temperature as possible, this optimises the output from the LED and power from the battery.
Effective heat dissipation with metal is reasonably easy and we have good experience with aluminium. However, even aluminium is relatively heavy and we knew that the lighter we could make the Capture the more useful it would be.
We turned to a new developing sector of materials technology that offer the heat transfer properties of aluminium but with the weight and design possibilities of thermoplastics. We carried out extensive trials with different materials from many suppliers but we never achieved the characteristics we needed. Strength and toughness could be obtained and good thermal transfer but never in the same material. Also many were virtually impossible to successfully mould.
How To Mould In Plastic and Dissipate The Heat.
This lack of success led us to start research and trials with the ‘super’ compound graphene which was in the process of becoming commercially available and viable. Its amazing strength to weight ratio and heat transfer characteristics make graphene a truly ‘super’ element.
Through stepped testing we established the optimum compound ratios for thermal conductivity and strength allowing the heat to be quickly drawn away from the LED’s for maximised efficiency and optimised battery power use.
Power To The People
The Capture will be able to offer 600, 400, 200 and 75 lumens for 35, 60, 120 and 340 minutes respectively.
After which you can either charge the battery in the housing or swap it over with any GoPro Hero 4 compatible batteries, which is handy if you are in the middle of nowhere and filming.
The OLED screen displays the balance selected between the spot and wide beams. The user can select how the power is distributed to either Lens. For example, the full 600 lumens can vary from:
600 Spot and 0 Wide to 500S – 100W, 400S – 200W, 300S – 300W, 200S – 400W, 100S – 500W, or 0S – 600W.
The centre of the OLED screen shows battery percentage remaining.
One of our most critical tasks will be ensuring the production units are ready for dispatch following completion of the Kickstarter Campaign. Thankfully we can draw on our existing manufacturing experience and because we build in the UK we are fast to react and move forward. Competitors manufacturing in the Far East cannot achieve this flexibility.
Risks & Challenges
One of the greatest challenges was using the new compound graphene and developing new moulding techniques for mass production. Over the 18 months of development this technique has been perfected and the first batch of final parts and components are now with us to commence assembly.
A further challenge was ensuring the product had all the desired features and functionality to be used in all of the proposed environments. To achieve this we have prototypes out being tested with user from professional sailors, in the Vendee Globe, cave divers who continue to break records and skateboarders who test durability and function.
With support from you, our Kickstarters, we know the Capture will succeed.
