Review : DiveSigns Alien Glow-In-The-Dark Stickers

Background

It didn't feel like 5 minutes ago that I was reviewing the line up of products on offer from Dive Signs, and I explicitly remember thinking to myself as I was writing it that Mark is always innovating (in particular I was thinking about the NFC tags he dabbled with). Well, he's gone and done it again.

In June 2016, Mark put out feelers about his latest idea ....

New Product: Alien stickers

The Alien stickers are the result of a problem faced by underwater videographers and photographers : when using video lights or strobes, the stickers are just too good and can either cause distraction (best case) in the frame, or can destroy the image due to the high reflectivity.

Look at the reflector on my drysuit arm!!

So on Saturday June 2nd 2016, Mark and I went for a dive out of Swanage on the Kyarra (actually as part of my joint birthday and stag-party - if you are interested in reading about all of our shenanigans then have a read here). Conditions were pretty horrific if I'm being honest. On the surface we had 4-5m swells, winds were around 30 mph - it was pretty hellish!

When we did eventually get in the water, we were met by a dark-green world with very strong currents.

Deck bollards on the Kyarra

You can see in the picture above, its dingy green and we are only at about 24m. So Mark and I did our dive. I was using my GoPro trying to shoot some video of the dive. The images in this review are stills taken from the video of the GoPro Hero.



Alien stickers on Mark

Alien stickers on Mark

Alien stickers on Mark

Conclusion

Due to the grim greeny-ness of the conditions we couldn't see any glow-in-the-dark effect. Having said that, I could clearly read the stickers on Marks' twinset. It was only once Mark was getting too far ahead that I was losing sight of ALL of him that the stickers became unreadable (look at the first picture of the three in a row above, you can see a diver ahead of Mark - that's what I mean).

Better conditions are needed to truly evaluate how glowy the glow in the dark stickers are in the water, but in person they are like first photograph at the top of this blog! That image is not photo shopped or edited, they really are that bright (if not brighter!!)

If you are going to be diving with either videographers or photographers, its worth using these stickers, they are not ultra-reflective and so wont saturate the image, but they are still very clearly legible  even under the grim conditions we had in Swanage.

It is likely that in a cave environment, you would be able to see your buddy purely off the sticker.

Another awesome product from Dive Signs, another recommendation from Dive Into The Fold!