A cool evening in the country

Hi all,

I just had a VERY cool evening in the country. Part of my family visited another part of the family, both in the country.

Flashlight testing conditions: completely dark night, no moonlight, no smog, some humidity in the air, 0°C, low wind. I thought about bringing my Canon compact camera, but I figured I'd probably get upset by it's limitations (again) and it was "forgotten" at home. I regret it now, I could have at least taken some multiple beamshot comparisons. Will have to repeat this whole experiment and bring my camera along, ANY beamshot is better than no beamshot.

I tested, in the order of appearance:

  • Small Sun ZY-C10-S
  • Keygos M12
  • Ultrafire V6-T60
  • Keygos KE-5
  • DRY NW

I had a hunter for company and we mostly talked about flashlights for hunting applications. We were half way up a hillside, with forest above and to the side, and fields below and houses to the other side.

My companion was happy (and impressed) with each one I tested. ZY-C10-S was very cool until M12 came along. After that KE-5 impressed him a lot. He was very skeptical about LEDs giving "decent" amounts of light, but I made him a believer. :D

My own impressions are mixed.

Small Sun ZY-C10-S is the best thrower of my lot, but it's beam is also useless for shooting up to 200m with low magnification scope. Well, it might even be useful when just a little bit below full throw mode, but it's VERY hard to locate your target with it. No visible (real world) spill. It DOES make a cool lightsabre. :)

I never thought I'd think low of Small Sun ZY-C10-S, but there it is. It's impressive as a thrower, but that's it. Beam on flood mode is too narrow and too dim compared to other lights. Runtime would probably be quite good, though.

Keygos M12 is a beast of uniform light on flood, and almost as bright as SS on zoom mode. It impressed him even more because on flood it was a LOT brighter than Small Sun, and on throw it was bright enough with a larger beam. He considered that one more useful for hunting.

Ultrafire V6-T60 is a semi-flooder, good for walking, very bright. Not very good for hunting, unless you are hunting something really close.

Keygos KE-5 is a thrower with not too tight a beam and plenty of useful spill. He was most impressed with this one, at least for hunting. He liked the spill because it would make the target easier to locate.

It's worth mentioning that we did talk about hunting solo vs hunting with assistants. KE-5 in his opinion is the best for locating the target and M12 image throw beam looked to him as the most useful to have on a gun/rifle. If he had to choose only 1, for soloing, I think he would go for KE-5. We tested none of the lights for actual hunting, just discussed the theory.

DRY NW even though not a thrower, made KE-5 try hard to be brighter, and even though the hotspot on KE-5 actually was brighter, the rest of the DRY beam thoroughly put out a wall of light on the whole .... well, whatever was in front of it. KE-5 spill was completely unnoticeable if DRY was on. Not good for hunting applications, but he was nonetheless impressed by the amount of light coming out of it.

Later on we went inside, talked a bit more about flashlights, what was available in hunting shops nearby, guns, food, wine, squeaky beds and similar. Very nice evening indeed. :)

To top it off, when our visit was over and we started for home, we had two very lovely encounters with the local game. I wasn't driving so I used the opportunity to play with the lights on the low speed meandering road that connects houses with the main road.

First my DRY caught a nice brown rabbit trying to escape the light and the car noise across the field to the side. He failed miserably. We had plenty of time to give him a good long look. ;)

Then, about 500m further on, after a small cluster of trees, my KE-5 caught a very nice (and confused) baby deer between the trees, also trying to escape, across the field and into a more thicker cluster of trees. :)

All in all, very nice evening of flashlights, nice company and good time.

Hope everyone had a nice Easter, for those who celebrate it, and a nice weekend for everyone else! :)

Viktor

Sounds like a great time, Viktor! Sure would have loved to see some beam shots but your descriptions painted a nice picture in their stead. :slight_smile:

well, my beamshots are so terrible that they aren't very useful. But, at least if they're posted, we have something to look at ;)

that....is subtlety lol

anyway - the C10 - yes, impressive little light with a very limited role. Soon I will begin a quest to find a decent to high quality glass lens. I believe, the right one will make it go from very good to fantastic.