Floody Throw Light Recommendation

That’s my thinking too…bigger lights are probably overkill for my needs, BUT I’ll get longer run times at low to mid range, even high if I need it and it won’t give the heat like turbo mode would.

Yeah probably 3-5 meters in my line of vision…just to know if I’d have to portage over a log or blow down or if I can push over it. I have a Fenix TK22 and when I mount it to the very front it does ok, but I want something better. So yeah, like you said the key is I want to keep the hot spot off the water and let the outside illumination of the light make the water visible. I’ve watched hours and hours of reviews but it’s hard to see what it would look like wrt to my needs. I’m really thinking of buying several to try out and I can keep some and give the others to my dad and father in law.

Which Nitecores do you think would work? I looked at the TM26gt and the TM28. They are more expensive though

I am not from a country in which we experience foggy conditions, but be very careful on the yellow/amber lights bandwagon. I am not a pro on this so you might wanna google it up in more detail, but i believe yellow/amber does not really “land more lux” on target. Maybe i am wrong, i don’t know……. shrugs

What i have read is that yellow improves definition.

Sofirn Q8 guns out 100k cd. BLF Q8 50k. Around that ballpark.

The Sofirn Q8 would probably stilll land more lux on target, even at 6000-7000k, vs BLF Q8 5000k. Anyway, 5000k is still not really yellow. :slight_smile:

But with that said, you ought to be pretty ok with both lights, at 50k or 100k cd. :slight_smile:

Yeah a headlight doesn’t work as it reflects off my paddle and arms while I’m paddling killing my vision. The bikelights some one mentioned above I didn’t care for either…they are really floody and need more lumens to work well I think. The BC30 I tried has to be on the highest setting I think for it to work.

I don’t think I’d need 200 yards throw…I mean it would be nice, but 100 would be plenty

Awesome! Thank you! I might pickup the Sofirn Q8 to compare and gift the one I don’t use. Waves shouldn’t be a factor as I’m always on calm water.

Quick google : Some professor’s (Dr. Lawrence D. Woolf) take on yellow or longer wavelengths on fog penetration.

Summary : It probably isn’t true that yellow increases penetration.

With that said, really need to get some real life lux meter readings @ say 200m with a 3000K and a 6500K light in foggy conditions. :slight_smile: In addition to user’s ease of target acquisition + target definition.

edit - but don’t take my statements wrongly. Yellow fog lights could still be seen by other drivers better than headlights, mainly coz of beam pattern cut-offs and/or colour that kinda thingy. And if you are going to switch on both HID/LED headlamps + extra set of foglights, then yes.
It’s something like our hobby’s Aspheric lens crowd vs Reflector lens crowd for throw. Fog lamps have much more defined throwy beam patterns.

As for reflected glare of the beam through the air back to the user of a 3000K beam vs a 6500K beam, i really don’t know. The scattering effect theory is said to be used wrongly in this case. It might be due to eye fatigue or perceived glare or something, but i believe the effect is relatively small for 5000K and 6500K.

@2100, there’s another reason cooler tinted lights perform worse under non-deal conditions: glare.

Cooled tinted light sources emit more glare than warmer tinted light sources, meaning under the same throw conditions, the cooler light will have more glare, and will spread out more, resulting in less clarity.

Also, we have to speak about diffused reflection. This happens when the intricacies of the surface, be it water droplets or the floor, are bigger than the wavelength of light emitted, there will be will be light diffusion across the atmosphere. With shorter wavelength light, and therefore cooler light, there will be more light diffusion across the atmosphere compared to warmer light sources.

What the professor is absolutely true. Redder sources of light don’t cut through the fog better. It’s just that bluer light sources diffuse more in the atmosphere.

That was my explanation anyway.

Might be true, it’s quite interesting actually. Thanks for pointing that out and i shall go google and see if there are any scientific tests done on this regarding the end-user end with regards to reflected light/glare. I’m not an expert on this.

Not sure if i was reading the professor’s mini write-up correctly, the reflected glare/diffusion due to Rayleigh scattering has been wrongly used? (or is my science / comprehension incorrect). Is this back-scattering (back to the user) or is it front scattering? Since he hinted as there is no rayleigh scattering effect, does this mean that it doesn’t matter at the end-user end as well?

In any case, 5000K vs 6500K, i think effects are going to be relatively benign. If it’s 2700K vs 6500K, then yeah the CCT difference is really there. :slight_smile: But BLF Q8 vs Sofirn Q8 is 50k vs 100k cd, that’s pretty big (though of course you’d need 4X the cd to double distance). In any case, both lights more than satisfy OP’s 100 yard requirement. :slight_smile:

What the professor is saying is 100% correct. I just added additional facts :slight_smile:

I see, i understand what you mean, i’ll just check out on the diffusion aspect as well.

My apologies - just being a bit on the flashaholic side today. Usually i am not that anal. lol :smiley:

Man ya’ll are thorough haha. I should have stopped and thought about it…1000-1500k is not a huge difference. But you’re right on the cd’s….the ol inverse square law…luckily I use that in my job so that makes sense LOL. That’d be what 1/2 of a stop of light? That’s not a huge difference numerically.

I may pick up the Sofirn and test it too.

Do you guys now how the BLF and Sofirn Q8’s will compare to the Astrolux MF01 and maybe the Fenix FD65?

Quite interesting……again i must reiterate that i am not superbly science literate so i might be mistaken.

I believe Rayleigh scattering part is quite proven.
Rayleigh scattering works for water molecues in the air (the sky looks blue). Fog particles have particle diameters which are too big to be affected by this. It is not dependent on light wavelengths, red/amber is basically 600 - 700nm, blue/voilet is 400nm to 460nm? 700nm is 0.0007mm, or 0.7 microns. Mean distribution for fog/cloud droplet diameters = 10-15 microns.

http://www.danielsternlighting.com/tech/lights/light_color/light_color.html

There is this thing called Mie scattering as well, applicable to particle sizes larger than the light’s wavelengths. But still, it is NOT back scattering, as it has a big frontal lobe in the direction of the light. You see this in nature with that white glare around sun. However, i suspect this STILL has a bit of effect in terms of back scattering, and it is still not strongly dependent on light wavelength.

So CW/NW/even Warm White should not make a difference in terms of Mie scattering reflected light even if we are talking about back-scatter or from the user’s POV. Look at the small reflected arrows against the direction of the light source, ie reflected back to the user.

http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/atmos/blusky.html

So is WW or CW lights more affected by *back *scattering in a cloud/fog? Maybe i might need to go google aviation stuff but i am not finding out a lot.

But other than ground fog, we also can take lower altitude and cumulus white clouds in the sky as an example, sunlight is reflected “pretty evenly” in both the red and blue wavelengths equally, that is why you do not see bluish clouds even when you are very close to the clouds while in a plane. I have a feeling that both red and blue wavelengths still fare evenly in this case in terms of back scattering, diffusion, whatever you’d call it.
Still that is not a perfect scientific explanation, i’d need to google that some more, maybe some folks with more scientific knowledge can chime in. :slight_smile:

I’m no pro, but i still personally believe at this point that even with a CW 7000K and WW 3000K big difference in CCT, there is no technical/scientific difference in terms of back scattering “glare”.

However there might be a perceived difference - eg WW in homes, it gives you a warm feeling vs CW. And also, warm white in low lumens/low intensity look and feel better than cold white. It’s sorta “hard wired” to our brains. Vice versa is true, cold white looks/feels better in a high intensity high-lux hotspot than WW…… you try to illum your living room with 2kW of halogen vs 400W of high CRI LED. :slight_smile: Though it probably does not matter much in your specific case.

I think i mentioned before that the Astrolux MF01/Mateminco MT18 might have too big a hotspot, it probably is bigger than the BLF Q8’s hotspot. So no guarantees the hotspot would not hit the water/ground at 15 metres mounted 1-2 feet high. It also does not have much spill due to the nature of the TIR’s optics, thus cutting out a fair bit on your kayak’s navigation at 2-5 metres? It does have 50k cd though, sufficient for your throw. Youtube it for hotspot/spill characteristics.

Fenix FD65 is nice. 3800 lumens, 42k cd. Close and long range zoomable. However it is not going to be doing both at the same time unlike the reflectors.
But it’d do both short-range spill and long range illum better than similarly specc-ed reflectors when zoomed out and zoomed in respectively. With the reflector lights, you can use 1 hand to ramp up/down the intensity. With this Fenix FD65, you’d need 2 hands to zoom, in addition to intensity ups/downs, on your kayak, maybe just 1 hand sometimes when it’s mounted. Can you live with this additional need for zooming in real life use? So it’s up to your choice. :slight_smile:

I got a ’20GT and a coupla regular ’20s. Both are the wider-head lights, not tubelights, but still nice and compact. Both are even marginally shorter than my Wuben i332, even though that takes only a 16340!

The GT has some nice “reach”, while the regular ’20 has a wider hotspot. For EDCing, the ’20 seems more practical, as you’re more likely to be grubbling around things close-up vs spotting owls in trees. Camping (and by extension kayaking or anything outdoorsy) I might lean towards the GT for the throw.

Only thing is you’ll need button-tops or at least a solder-blob for the Nitecores, as there’s no driver-side spring, so be sure to get one if you don’t have one already.

A cheapie headlight like a Boruit RJ02, you can replace the come-with TIR lens for anything you want, even a 5° or 8° one.

BLF Q8 vs Astrolux MF01 done by Flashaholics.

You can see the difference in hotspot size and beam characteristic (MF01 is a TIR lens). Both are 50k cd, BLF is 5000 lumens and MF01 is slightly over 2X of that. BLF Q8 has more spill.

Look at the far end brick wall and tree in the hotspot of both lights. On the BLF Q8 neutral white, there is more detail definition and contrast, the tree stands out from the red brick wall. On the Astrolux MF01 XP-G3 CW, the details is largely lost, even though both lux intensity at target is the same.

Thanks! Somehow out of the hundreds of youtube videos I watched I missed this one LOL….I ordered the Sofrin Q8 too…I really like what I’m seeing out of the Q8’s. I’ll try those and go from there.

I’ll check that out…It would be nice to have a more spot like headlamp….I usually always wear one kayaking in case I need something lit up to the extreme sides.

Whoa-hoa… I just got a Orbit headlamp to play with. Just wait for my review coming up as soon as I get to put it through its paces.

Pure flood, essentially a mule of a light that you wear on your head. Essentially, it lights up everything around you, with no hotspot to speak of.

Great. Get a tripod screw and attach a lanyard paracord to it, use both at the same time one in each hand. You’d sorta get 12000 lumens esp with spring bypass. :slight_smile: