I’m more of a “touchy feely” reviewer, not much tech stuff(amp, voltage, etc.).
A lot more “How would this perform in the real world”? 
Here I dropped a flashlight on a tiled floor and dropped it in a bowl of water:
In this review, I rode my bike for almost 4 hours in the rain:
Thanks guys for all the suggestions and ideas.
I`m looking for a link/picture.
I want to measure the Amps. on a flashlight while the battery is installed, to see how many amps the light draws from the battery.
Do you guys just put magnets on the negative of the battery and the negative wire from the DMM?
and then let the light run, and write down the amps every 5 mintues or so?
or is there something that you can connect to your computer so that it will make a graph on its own?
You can get DMM's with computer connection, this makes it considerable easier to log the data (Just sit back and let the computer do the work).
But there is another problem, that is getting a low enough voltage drop through the test leads and the DMM.
Check your DMM specs, some of them say they can only read amp currents for 15 seconds. Can’t help you on how to do this though. I think some of the people who do this have the PC connectable, graphing, high-end multimeters. Unfortunately a $35 meter was all I could afford.
The time limited current is usual something like above 10A for 15 seconds, i.e. you measure 9A for considerable longer.
I also paid $30 for dmm, it was second hand... Fluke 77III... but without any special connections.
so that won`t work for me, and most other people I believe.
how do you do it HKJ if I may ask? (making graphs on current drawing)
can`t read your picture Chrysler.. Kreisler.. link please
I saw someone take time lapse pictures for a runtime test. Seems like the way to go unless you can afford a logger. I'd love logging capability, and for someone else to pay for it.
I did!
I know I’m biased, but sometimes the graphs are a little busy for me. And sometimes it takes a while to figure out what you’re looking at, or the right line to look at. I appreciate them, but I also prefer less data per graph.
I like to be able to see the drop in output visually. It is time consuming though, because you need to set time aside and take the photographs at regular intervals. I had to set my phone alarm to keep them on schedule.
I uses an external computer controlled power supply, it can both measure current and voltage, but for voltage I often uses a DMM connected directly to the light or as close to as possible. For flashlights I do also place a lux meter in front of the light.
This gives me: Current, Voltage and lux, then I can calculate Watt.
To get comperable values between modes, the flashlight is mounted in a vice during all the measurement (That is the the reason I did not show curves for all modes in the NiteCore sens lights).
For runtime I uses batteries without any DMM's in between, only a light sensor in front of the light
Computer connected DMM's are not that expensive (Except from Fluke), UNI-T has a couple of models.
Just remember to disable auto exposure!
I do prefer a chart, it takes way to much time to look at a video.
This is how I did it.. works well..
Set my DSLR on Manual.. set exposure and shutter speed. Whitebalance on a certain K.. and attach my remote control and use a kitchen timer that starts at 10minutes..
This kitchen timer will give a short beep at 5 minutes and a long one at Finish.
so every 5minutes I turn the ceiling lights off, and take the picture, using the remote shutter... so I don`t touch the camera.
And the camera doesnt get moved.
Afterwards I open GIMP and add them as layers... And put them in order, and add the text....
For me its just showing when the light starts dimming to show the run-time.... not for comparing output with other lights..
but that could actually be a good idea though.. as set aperture and shutter speed, (WB will be tough)
That is interesting to see run times in time lapse rather than graph or chart of numbers.
So the computer takes all the values!? And you don't write anything down?
I believe he codes his logging software too. He's a wizard.
Yes, I get a file like this:
index time Brightness Voltage PSV PSA
1 0 0,17324 12,8786 12,998 1,596
2 1 0,17168 12,8676 12,918 1,592
3 2 0,17133 12,7378 12,836 1,592
....
100 99 0,15192 4,87353 5,077 3,318
101 100 0,15191 4,78939 4,998 3,377
102 101 0,15191 4,70647 4,917 3,439
103 102 0,15182 4,62234 4,837 3,503
Note: The columns and headers are not aligned.
PSV and PSA is the power supply volt and ampere.
Thanks..... but now I'm curious how other people do it
There is a new thread talking about the kind of pictures people like to see in reviews.. Jpeg, GIF, or mouse over?
Another thread about How to measure lumens.
I don’t know if it’s been mentioned before but is there a rule about image size?
I run all my images through Photoshop Elements then store them on Photobucket. I resize them making them 72d.p.i… less than 100k filesize and 800 or less pixels wide, it’s easy enough to do and one nice side effect is that after 10 years of photography my Photobucket account is still only 8% full.
The main reason that I started doing this is to save bandwidth for the website that I’m posting on and download time for those of us who have had a less than perfect download speed.
It also means that threads don’t run off the edge of the “page”.
There are many free software packages that will do resizing quickly and efficiently, GIMP, Irfanview etc.