Which one of these would you buy? (or, why manual camera control matters)

LED Flashlights – General Info
1

...if they were the same price?

This one (tree is about 100 feet away)

This one?

or this one?

OK, by now you probably figured out it is a trick question, sorry bout that. All three of the above photos were of the same light, on the same setting, taken withing seconds of each other tonight. And PLEASE, let me clarify, I mean absolutely no disrespect to anyone on this forum who has ever taken the time and effort to submit beamshots. That has never been my intent, and I respect those who have gone through all the steps that you did just to post a photo here.

I am submitting this thread with the intention of showing that with just a little bit more effort, your results will be substantially better. It is not difficult, so if you care to try it out, read on, but I suspect this will be a bit long and boring for most.

#1 If you have a Point and Shoot camera that does not have manual controls, ignore the rest of this thread. Your camera will pick out whatever setting its computer feels most closely matches daylight. You will throw away a lot of images. If you have a Fireworks mode or Candlelight mode, you might try them, but basically it is still going to try to make all of your beams from various lights look the same. You will get a good hotspot, but tint and brightness will not be something you will be able to compare to other lights. Try it and you will see what I mean.

#2 If you have manual controls on your camera, you are the master of your domain. Check out fonarik.com where you will find HUNDREDS of beamshots (usually four per camera in each of 3 different settings, total 12 or more per camera tested) and every single image was taken with the exact same camera and same settings. Awesome site if you are buying a "popular" brand light. That is what you want to do with your beamshots.

#3 Realize that beamshots are pretty advanced stuff. They are tricky, they are difficult, they take some time. Why are they so hard to do? Because you aren't photographing something, you are trying to photograph the light that comes off of some thing. That is a huge difference if you think about it.

Let me show you what I mean.

Here is a photo I took tonight in my absolutely dark living room. I used an S-mini XM-L as the only light in the room, beam focused just above the piano. Took it with wide-open aperture (2.8f) and 1/25th of a second shutter speed. Still got a little glare off the oil painting, but overall got a good grip of what the light could do.

Just a couple of seconds later, I took the exact same shot, but instead of 1/25th I shot it at 1/2 second, so almost a half second longer shutter speed.

Now here is the problem; the average person out there would look at the last image and say. "That's a crappy photo, it is totally over-exposed". But we are flashaholics! We look at the second image and say, " I want that flashlight, that is awesome!" We don't give a rat's patootie about how the piano looks, in fact, to paraphrase Foy, if the light is so bright that it makes the piano invisible, just a blur of light, we are in love with the device that caused it.

But both photos are the same light, the only difference was how the operator set up the camera or, worse yet, we put the camera on "Auto" and let it try to make daylight out of our beamshot. The camera gives us what the average person wants to see. THAT IS NOT WHAT WE WANT TO SEE. We want to see how the image really looks to our eyeball when we shine some specific light on it. We don't care about the subject like our camera does, we care about capturing candlepower.

Let's go back to the original three photos at the start of this thread.

The first one was shot at 1/3 of a second, the second was taken at 2 seconds and the third at 3.2 seconds shutter time. Again, the average photo critic loves the first one, hates the overexposure in the other two.

Not us, we love #3 and rush to buy that light. But its the same light as the others, the good old KD C8 set on High. No other settings were changed. Cameras by definition are light-capturing machines. They will take in as much light as they can without blowing-out whites, when you set them on Auto. They will lie to us about flashlight beams in the dark because their makers thought we all wanted to see as much light as possible.

People are out there searching the Internet for specific products, coming to our forum, usually as guests, and paying attention to we say about flashlights. Maybe I'm a dreamer or a purist or overly critical, but I think if they come here they deserve to get good information. They deserve an accurate depiction of what a torch beam looks like and they should be able to compare it to other lights.

That's my only point people, if you hate me for that so be it. I won't make any more comments about it in other threads, I did not intend to criticize anyone's efforts, or wreck any threads, and I thought that I tried to be a gentleman about what I did say. Please forgive me if it did not come across that way.

And as someone else said, I guess even Point and Shoot beamshots are better than no beamshots, but be careful what you are impressed by in them. The hotspot size will still be accurate, but the lumens and the tint will not be. They may be close, of they may vary by hundreds of lumens apart because the camera made the decision what it wanted us to see.

So if your camera has an "M" setting, use it. Outside, set Shutter to 1/2 second and Aperture to the lowest number you can find, and check out the photo on your computer to see what it looks like. If it is brighter than what you think your eyes saw, decrease shutter speed to 1/3 second and try again. If it is too dark, increase shutter speed to .6 sec or so and see what you think. It takes some trial and error, but it is worth it. On a long-distance shot, you may go for a 1-second shutter speed, but look hard and see if that is really what you saw. If your camera's aperture only goes to f5.6, you may have to make shutter speed even longer, but do so cautiously.

Oh, a couple other hints. A tripod or very solid surface is a necessity, no way are you getting long exposures cleanly when you hand-hold a 1/2 second shot.

And put the camera on 2-second timer when you take the photo, so your finger-push on the trigger won't rock the camera itself.

If you can manually set white balance, set it to Custom 5400, you will get a better indication of beam tint.

I use ISO 400, fonarik.com uses ISO 800; but their camera is way better than mine!

Good luck, and good shooting!

2

I wanted to add, I learned something tonight playing around at fonarik.com

I tried out the setting they use, which are pretty cool, but 13-second exposures require some patience and NOTHING in the image can move or you will see ghosts.

Here is the same KDC8 as above, still set on high, at 13 seconds and f16, and if you mouseover the image you will see the 1/3 sec exposure at f2.8 that was the first image in the original post above.

The 13-second exposure lets in a little more light, and I like the way they did that, there are other subtle differences as well. Might have to change my methods on how I do beamshots.

3

Yup, you got that right. The thing is, there ought to be a set of "standard settings" so we can gauge the brightness levels. Manual setting is a must.

At ISO 400 - I would suggest an aperture setting of f/5.6 as standard. Why? Because most non-pro (i.e. consumer zooms) lenses are capable of this; at least at the long end of the zoom range. It's pointless to suggest f/2.8 or even f/1.4 as only serious shooters would have access to these fast (expensive) lenses. Then we would have to have a set of shutter speeds to match the aperture at different (brightness) levels. You might say 1/4 sec. for a 450-650 lumen light at 30 feet, for example. At 150 feet it might be 2 secs. or maybe 3 (secs.). These are just very rough estimates. I haven't really tested it out yet. When testing my son's aspheric at 400ft. I used a shutter speed of 2 secs. at f/5.6.

But it gets more complicated. The target colour/texture will also skew the results. When photographing a white wall vs. a row of dark-green trees there may be a difference of 5-7 stops. So the targets would have to be standardized at well. A white wall at 100 feet might give you the same result as a row of trees at 15 feet at the same (camera) setting! So therefore even the distances as well as the targets would have to be standardized as well. And it goes on...

I guess the most useful guide is to compare different lights at the same settings. That's really useful if you happen to own one of the lights being reviewed. Then you could see how your beloved flashlight stacks up against the "competition."

4

Useful post, Troop. I've long felt that beamshots, while exciting to look at, offer only a limited usefulness with regards to an objectice evaluation by potential buyers. But do remember that most cameras, even the P&S variety, offer an exposure compensation facility to brighten/darken the camera's choice of 'ideal' exposure. Perhaps the very cheapest don't, but it's usually possible to look at the factory set results and simply + or - the exposure till the photo matches what your eyes are seeing. You'll never get it exactly right, but there are so many variables involved (screen brightness, eyesight etc) that precise accuracy is impossible and largely irrelevant.

In addition, it's worth mentioning that "white balance" means something slightly different to what many people believe, i.e. it doesn't simply turn a torch beam as 'white' as possible! White balance means correcting the effect of light sources of unnatural tints that deviate from the effect of neutral daylight, but I've found that, with white wall hunting beamshots, the beam is often unaffected, and the camera will record a reasonably accurate image of what the eye sees. I'm not sure why or even how this happens, but I'd guess it's because of the very limited subject matter; i.e. what is being photographed is actually just an expanse of white wall or ceiling. With no other point of reference from which its database can extrapolate, the camera will often faithfully record what it 'sees', including a purple tinted torch beam. And of course results will vary from camera to camera.

5

Oops... I forgot to mention that the white balance should be set to "daylight" or around 5600K. Setting the camera to "auto white balance" will affect not only the colour but (to some extent) the exposure as well. As the camera seeks to equalize the colour balance on "auto" it will have a little influence on the brightness (exposure) of the image. Maybe just a little but even so we should try to keep the variations to a minimum.

6

I have suggested in this forum a couple of times already to have a standard set of camera settings to use on beamshots but it never took off. There have been misconceptions on the idea but now BLFers may agree after seeing this thread.

7

Lensman, I expected white balance to affect accuracy of beam colors (shade). I find your observation surprising.

8

Using the wrong white balance setting can have bizarre results.

In the Lilving Room shots above, I tried the "incandescent" setting, thinking the warm beam of the S-mini XML was very incandescent in color. What I got was a BLUE room, everything in it was blue. I'll post the image when I get home tonight and you will see what I mean.

9

One good point that I always follow for long shutter speed - other than tripod/stand, always use that 2sec timer. That's enough time for the camera to restabilize from your button press and produce much better, shake-free pictures.

10

Well it can do, but not always in a predictable way. If the beam is 'off colour' (purplish, greenish etc) and it's shining onto a white surface, the resulting shot is a circle of wall or ceiling that appears to be a purplish or greenish shade of white. The photo will often simply show this; i.e. the camera's onboard computer treats this area of wall as just another coloured object. Think of it this way: if the wall itself was actually that same off-white shade to start with, we wouldn't expect the camera to automatically 'bleach' it pure white, would we?

Don't get too preoccupied with the idea that the light source isn't pure white, and that therefore the cameras awb (auto white balance) will correct it. It often will try to do so, but the camera usually needs the light to be illuminating a recognizable scene that its (the camera's) electronic database can relate to. A white wall beam shot becomes the subject itself, therefore the camera will often simply faithfully reproduce the light itself as if it were the main subject, which of course it is.

'Real life' beam shots are usually trickier for that reason; when the illuminated area conforms to something that the camera recognizes as a 'scene', awb will usually try to 'correct' the result so that it looks neutral rather than warm or cool etc. But it's worth remembering that even with awb switched off, your results will still be 'factory set', i.e. my camera's interpretation of this tint or that light scource on this or that subject matter (brickwork, foliage etc) will likely be different from your camera's. One of the downsides of didital imaging - unless you spend a fortune - is the absence of universal interpretive contancy. If you read any digital camera reviews, you will quickly see that an important criterion is how the camera renders colours, which of course includes beam tints.

11

Excellent post trooplewis, all the hassle of making beam shots is ruined by not fixing the settings, even if different to everyone else at least that set can be compared fairly.

As BanglaBob says, if we have a recommended BLF setting it should be available on most cameras. Does the ISO400 - f/5.6 - 1/4second - WB daylight/5600k suit this? And then adjust shutter speed as required? I'm gonna see if my camera will do this...

12

Sadly my camera doesn't have a manual mode. Maybe it's time for a new camera.

13

What camera is it?

For the camera experts; My camera has a 1second setting and then goes to 1.3nr(maybe an a) then 1.6, 2 and on, what are these numbers?

14

Jeansy: "For the camera experts; My camera has a 1second setting and then goes to 1.3nr(maybe an a) then 1.6, 2 and on, what are these numbers? "

Seconds. I.e. 1.3 secs, 1.6 secs, 2 secs etc. No idea what the 'nr' might be , though.

15

Mine is a Canon sd1200 IS.

16

No because it carries on with the seconds, this is the other way, faster. I guess it's fractions of a second, so maybe 2nr would give me the 1/2second setting as above?

17

Does it have exposure compensation feature? This is usually designated by 'exp +/-', or something like that. If it doesn't, then I'd agree that a new camera would be a good if you want to take 'serious' pics. If it does have exp comp, then simply dial in plus 1, plus 1.5 etc until the results match what your eyes are seeing when you shine the torch.

18

Check the manual, that camera can be fully adjusted I think, infact I think Canons are one of the best for this, this is from a review site

'Shooting modes: The SD1200 has 18 preset shooting modes including P or Program mode, which allows a more advanced photographer to set ISO speed, white balance, and metering. Two interesting modes are the Aquarium setting, which allows photos of underwater life with no glare off of aquarium glass, and Underwater, which takes photos underwater with a low backscatter (with the proper waterproof case). Other modes include Digital Macro, which allows for close-up shooting, Long Shutter for artistic blur, and Kids & Pets for speedy focusing and fast shooting.'

19

Jeansy: "Pnoticeable it carries on with the seconds, this is the other way, faster. I guess it's fractions of a second, so maybe 2nr would give me the 1/2second setting as above?"

In that case, yes. Unusual settings, the '2' makes sense as 1/2 sec, but 1.3 and 1.6 are strange to me. But yes, basically they must be fractions as you suggest. Still can't think what nr might be, though..

20

I don't know about the exp +/- feature but I will check when I get home. But for the modes I had it set to Program for this thread. https://budgetlightforum.com/t/-/8832 Which worked fairly well.