The Flashlight Thread

[Safari38LH]

Streamlight Waypoint - awesome

[jimmysbliss]

Sorry, hit the post button by accident. This flash light gives me a great safety tool to blind any intruder coming up on my boat or investigating noises in the night. It will light up the night in three power modes. I bought a extra battery body along which takes 4 lithium batteries and have 8 batteries total. This gives me long lasting high power lighting if needed to keep on for extended periods of time or making sure it is always ready to go sitting around for months.

The flash light is a FENIX TK75 2600 Lumen Triple CREE XM-L U2 LED Flashlight/ Searchlight with Eight Genuine Fenix ARB-L2 18650 Batteries, Fenix AER-TK75 Extender tube, Battery Magazine , Two Nitecore i4 smart battery Chargers and Red Smith & Wesson LED CaraBeamer Clip Light Bundle.

The batteries are the most expensive expense and spent over $350 on amazon for everything. Is it worth it? Hell, yea when it comes having one of the most powerful flash light you can buy in a compact size. To light up the blackness while cruising and being in the vast amount of situations which blue water cruising tends to do.

Aloha,
David

[Delancey]

Got a kick out of this guy!

Brightest flashlight in the world_20000 lumen - YouTube

[hellosailor]

Guy-
You will find that your wish has come true. Your Maglite, and almost all flashlights, "are magnetic" now. Even the plastic ones.

Actually, it is the battery cases of the typical alkaline batteries that are magnetic. Your magnet will lust for the batteries inside the flashlight, and that will allow you to lift the while thing out if you have suitable magnets.

I use a surplussed hard drive magnet to hold a small aluminum flashlight to the wall, and it baffles people how I have an "aluminum magnet" that works with it.

[natew]

I have, I think it is, one of these rayovac "indestructible" LED flashlights: http://www.amazon.com/Rayovac-Virtua...d+flashlight+D

I picked it up at walmart in a kit with an equally durable headlamp. So far I'm quite happy with it, it is pretty darn powerful and really durable. It has taken several falls from our shelf area in the cockpit down onto the cockpit floor which is about a 5 foot drop and you wouldn't even know it.

[deckofficer]

Remember when we all were kids and the brightest flashlight was the 6 volt lantern battery flashlight? I used this light as the standard against my 3000 lumen custom built LED. Set the camera exposure so that it isn't too washed out with the LED, then kept the same exposure for the 6 volt lantern flashlight.

The exposure is set, no flashlight, just room light.


Notice the beam spot in the far room....


The 6 volt lantern concentrates it's light in a narrow beam, whereas my shop built LED is a flood. Even at a flood dispersion, so much more light output.

[sailorchic34]

Well Single handing or just checking the anchor deck stuff at night requires a head lamp to keep the hands free.

I use a Coast HL7 with focusing, tilting, variable brightness and waterproof. Only one Cree lamp, but nice enough for nighttime on deck messing about. Came in handy pulling the engine out last year too.

Coast HL7 Focusing 196 Lumen LED Headlamp - - Amazon.com

I found it a bit cheaper at a local hardware store, BTW.

[deckofficer]

Originally Posted by sailorchic34

Well Single handing or just checking the anchor deck stuff at night requires a head lamp to keep the hands free.

I use a Coast HL7 with focusing, tilting, variable brightness and waterproof. Only one Cree lamp, but nice enough for nighttime on deck messing about. Came in handy pulling the engine out last year too.

Coast HL7 Focusing 196 Lumen LED Headlamp - - Amazon.com

I found it a bit cheaper at a local hardware store, BTW.

I agree, a much better choice over my light. And yours you have the option of choosing a given light output. I would like mine better if I could turn it down from 3000 lumen to 200.

[sailorchic34]

Originally Posted by deckofficer

I agree, a much better choice over my light. And yours you have the option of choosing a given light output. I would like mine better if I could turn it down from 3000 lumen to 200.

LOL, I would love a 3000 lumen to 200 lumen head lamp. That would be so cool.

[jeepbluetj]

A 3000 lumen head lamp would be awesome. We'd see sailorchic for miles. At least until her forehead caught on fire. That would be a not-good event.

I have a cheapie defiant from homey depot that I like a lot. Unfortunately they no longer sell it - had the battery on the back with a top-of-head strap (like some Coast models) -- got it for something like $10 and it's been very good.

[Delancey]

Couple thoughts about LED's-

About a dozen years ago I worked in an industry that was an early adopter of LED's, if you can say that about a technology that has been in practical use since the sixties.

We had a salesman come by once pitching his product and I remember him claiming the first application for contemporary white LED lighting was on nuclear submarines. Supposedly every time they broke a fluorescent light bulb, it was this big expensive ordeal to clean them up because of the closed environment.

I don't know if it's true or not, but it's a nice story.

Anyhell, the technology isn't new and basically consists of a stack of gem chips potted in epoxy, you pass a current through them, and they vibrate and emit light. Pretty simple. (Some of you may know BTW, that epoxy tends to not tolerate heat so well. Heat is the LED killer)

This is all well and fine. The have very low draw and if properly loaded can have a very long and otherwise functionally unlimited life, but there are two catches.

One, the LED's are not capable of putting out a true white light. Only colors.

The workaround to this is by incorporating a luminescent component to the epoxy potting that transforms the light, typically from a blue color, to a whitish looking light. The problem with this is that the luminescent component is not durable and will degrade over time, causing a color shift from whitish back to blue.

Better quality and more expensive LED's will maintain their colorfastness longer. (you can get a more true white light by combining Red, Green, and Blue LED's as seen in many display types, but those don't really apply to our situation)

The second catch is that the brightness of an LED is a function of voltage and some manufacturer's will cheat the brightness by running them higher, which leads to more heat, which means shorter life.

Just like the Nexus 6, the light that burns twice as bright burns twice as fast

Something to watch out for if you are spending good money for a flashlight you expect to provide years of service. For example, my Pelican might not be the brightest but it should be good for 10,000 hours, which means never having to replace a light bulb!

[hellosailor]

While we're at it...

I called Thumper a couple of years ago to ask why their 6v lantern "kit" with battery was selling for 1/2 the price of just a battery. Ah, well, it seems the lantern batteries are made in very different capacities now. Some use 4xF cells, some only use 4xD cells, and have half the run time. Caveat emptor but apparently they figure if you only need an emergency lamp to stow for blackouts, cheap is good.

Can someone reality check me on lumens?
I keep getting lumens and candela and candlepower all confused. If I've got it straight this week, lumens refer to brightness falling over a specific area, NOT the brightness of the source. i.e. if you have a light that can be focused, and you focus it tightly on one square foot, you may measure 1000 lumens on that square foot. But if you open up the focus and it now covers 10 square feet, that same illumination will measure only 100 lumens, 1/10th "as bright" because it is not the brightness being measured, but the amount of light falling on each unit of area.

As opposed to measuring the brightness of the bulb in candela, which only tells you how bright the bulb is if you also reference the beamspread you are measuring in, i.e. an LED may have full brightness over a 60 degree cone, or 20 degree, or 120 degree, and outside that cone the brightness falls way off.

[Delancey]

Wikipedia does a better job than I ever would

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lumen_(unit)

Lighting fun fact : the unit of measure of one candle power was derived from the light produced by a spermaceti candle. If not for the advent of petroleum we wouldn't have any whales left.

[jolly jack tar]

Originally Posted by Delancey

Here's a nifty headlamp I don't even know where it came from, but I have had for a couple years and really like. Too bad it is a generic non-branded item, would be nice to get another. It has a switch and can either work with a single red or three white LED's

"PETZL" also make a good LED headlight (red and white light) and various strengths, very similar to that one you got there. They are waterproof also. Any good outdoor centre should have them in the climbing gear section.

http://www.petzl.com/en/pro/headlamp...-rugged/pixa-3

great for going up the mast at night

cheers,
JJT

[Delancey]

Originally Posted by hellosailor

I'd also suggest putting some dielectric grease generously on the battery contacts. That way when they leak--as they do so often these days--you can just wipe off the mess, it doesn't attack the metal contacts.

A friend of mine gave me a can of this stuff which gets a lot of use around the boat. It's lanolin based but there are other brands out there.

After you had mentioned this I was wondering if there wouldn't be any harm in giving the batteries themselves a blast?

Maybe a back-up stock that you are saving in Ziplocks for a rainy day? I don't know but wonder if a light film on the contacts couldn't protect the battery from potentially discharging if immersed? Any thoughts?