Kraken Sports Hydra 12,000 WRGBU Underwater Video Light
Kraken Sports Hydra 12,000 WRGBU Underwater Video Light
SKU: # kr-hydra-12000
Price $749.00
Overview / Product Description
Kraken Sports Hydra 12,000 WRGBU Underwater Video Light
12,000 lumens with CRI ~90 at 5600K. Consistent 10,000 lumen output at standard setting, push to 12,000 in Turbo mode. 120° even flood beam, push-button dial for smooth power control, flat output curve that holds through the dive. USB-C, 100m rated.
12,000 lumens at full brightness. The Hydra 12K puts out enough to fill a wide-angle frame or light up a dark swim-through without going full throttle, which matters for battery life and not blowing out close subjects. CRI is rated at ~90 — genuinely good color rendition, not the washed-out greenish output you get from cheaper lights.
At the standard setting, the Hydra 12K outputs 10,000 lumens of consistent flood light. Push the dial to 120% (Turbo), and you get the full 12,000 lumens at a shorter burn time. The output curve is as flat as Kraken can make it at either setting — what you set is what you get for the duration of the dive.
CRI 90 means your footage captures colors as they actually exist underwater. Reds stay red, corals hold their saturation, and you spend less time pushing white balance sliders in post. For anyone who has spent a dive trip trying to fix green-tinted footage, this is the spec that saves you that work at the source.
What sets the Hydra 12K apart from a standard video light is the WRGBU LED array: White, Red, Green, Blue, and UV channels, each independently controllable. Red preserves marine life behavior in low-light environments where a white beam causes animals to scatter. UV opens up a whole category of fluorescence photography — coral, nudibranchs, and scorpionfish that look completely different under UV than ambient light. Blue mode works similarly for fluorescence work when you're pushing into narrower spectra.
Modes include White, Red, Green, Blue, UV, Preset (your saved mix), Disco Mode (automatic RGB cycling), and Burst. USB-C charging. Rated to 100m/330ft.
Burst mode — fiber-optic triggered: Sync via fiber-optic cable to your camera's built-in flash, and the Hydra 12K fires a quick, bright pulse timed to your shutter. Recycle is fast. The limitation isn't recycle speed — it's flash duration. A xenon strobe fires in microseconds; burst mode fires longer than that, so very fast-moving subjects won't be frozen as sharply. For macro work on slower subjects — nudibranchs, cleaning stations, coral detail — it produces noticeably better results than continuous light alone. Note: burst mode output is the same 12,000 lumens as Turbo — it's not brighter, just triggered rather than dialed in.
If you've been shooting strictly still photography and haven't tried fluorescence work, the Hydra 12K is the light that will change your mind. The UV and color channels aren't afterthoughts bolted onto a standard video light — they're the reason this exists.
Specs
- Lumens: 10,000 Constant Flood, 12,000 Lumen Burst, 12,000 Lumen Turbo
- Modes: Flood, Red, Blue, Green, UVRGB Adjustable
- Battery: 4x 21700 with USB-C charging
- Switch: Push Button with Dial
- Beam Angle: 120 Degrees Underwater
- CRI: 90
- Color Temp: 5600K
- Burn Time: 60 Minutes @ 100% Flood, 40 Minutes @ 120% Power
- Depth Rating: 330ft / 100m
- Weight on Land: 1035g / 2.28lbs
- Weight Underwater: 450g / 0.99lbs
- Dimensions: 79mm (D) 178mm (L) / 3.1in (D) 7.0in (L)