I'm always turning lights down ad think moon modes are essential to good edc's
I keep the big guns by the front and back door .So if my dog alerts me to some stray cat or raccoon I can light him up .I'm slowly breaking my neighbors in to the thought that even though the sun may appear to be shining at 3 a.m. ... it's just an illusion ..."go back to bed"
When it come to lumens ...less is better
But we all know....
If pissed off we could reach over and grab a light so bright
it would strip the paint off the neighbors garage door
I like waking up to daylight but when living in a basement with no windows i would keep a convoy m1 on low turned on so i would not be waking up in the dark.
I was testing the starry light for battery life and found the lowest mode ate 10% in 12 hours, most of that is probably the eneloop self discharging. The 2nd mode ate 25% in 12 hours, so a nice bump in output while lasting several nights.
Another moonlight fan here. I’m currently at an east coast beach where they discourge use of bright lights at night to help sea turtles. Walking my dog with my XIAOZHI is too bright on low, but my oLight i3 is perfect.
Why sea turtles need special low lighting
The evening lights we use at home after 8pm are mostly “sea turtle safe” lights — they’re no-blue-light emitters, basically. Little children and older folks benefit particularly from that for good sleep.
Our nighttime flashlights are all amber LEDs too.
I’m not really into night lights but I find that moonlight mode in a flashlight can be very useful. On the subject of blue lights, I find the f.lux software makes my PC monitor’s display easier on the eyes at night.
I took some comparison pics of my mains power night lights, on a strip with some neons (left). The Masterplug white LED is the least bright. The photosensor is annoying so I put some tape over it so it is always on.
My first ‘old school’ night light has two neons inside, and is pretty bright:
Masterplug white LED:
The older Ecozone were green EL. These put out a lot of light:
Now they are blue EL, and more subdued. With these lighting a room, it almost feels like being in a sci-fi film.
I'm a moon-mode fan myself. The lower the better to a certain point. I have some lights as low as 0.04 lumens and they are still useful but not as much as 0.2 lumen. I find I use moon mode as much or more than any other mode in my lights and the brighter my lights get the more I appreciate an equally low moon mode.
I find that going upstairs at night to visit the bathroom or go to the kitchen I'd much rather navigate with the lights off and a torch in moon low. Somehow it's more comfortable being in the dim lighting at night.
Jack's finger trick is cute until you have to do something requiring more than one hand. That finger comes off the lens and BAM! Instant blindness! Most of the time I'm trying to get dressed in the dark or extricate my joint for a piss. The finger trick can't beat a proper EDC. ;)
That shows f.lux working on a specific Asus monitor, yours may be different, but so far any fluorescent white light source including white LEDs is activated by the blue emission; other colors are secondary re-emission from phosphors).
I bought some led night lights when I first started playing with leds . the quality and lack of electronic components is scary. 3 5mm leds a switch a transformer a transister and maybe a resistor ?? Even the board is lose .all in a housing that was falling apart at the factory .They must have just thrown the parts in a box hoping they would grow to love one another during shipping and magicly fix themselves .Of course the boxes they came in fell apart too . I think there must have been a big glue shortage that year. The scariest part... is the fact I've been running them for over 4 years .
I’m not really into night lights but I find that moonlight mode in a flashlight can be very useful. On the subject of blue lights, I find the f.lux software makes my PC monitor’s display easier on the eyes at night.
Tried it out last night. Very nice. My eyes thank you. I actually felt calmer and did go to bed a little earlier too. Great tip Piquelito!
I like bright lights pretty much all the time. The brighter, the better. I’ve never liked night lights. I always thought a 7w bulb for any kind of general lighting was pointless. When I bought CFL’s it was so that I could get more lumens not to save energy. Have you ever seen an actual 60w twister bulb? They don’t fit in any 60w incan fixture I know of.
Anyway, I recently bought an Olight Baton S20 and I never thought a moonlight mode would actually be very useful to me. The moonlight mode on the Olight is 0.5lm. I figured that if I needed low light, the low mode at 5lm would work just fine. But, I have found myself using moonlight mode in the mornings when I get up (early, still very dark) so as not to disturb my wife, yet have a little light. In that context, I’ve even started thinking of the moonlight mode as being “a bit on the brighter side”. So, I guess now I like the idea of an ultra-low lighting option. But, I still want lots of light when I can get it. The MAX mode is never bright enough.
I like a moonlight mode. The RMM modified SupFire M6 has three very low modes varying from about 1/6 Lumen to an estimated 10 lumens or so and yet the high is 4000+ Lumens. Total of 7 output levels available. A very versatile light. In the two lowest levels you can look directly at the LED dies without any dazzle effect. Love the light.
On a clear, cloudless night when the mood is full, it's brighter than what you guys call "moonlight mode". My eyes are worth crap in the dark. I'm one of those night blindness people. When I drive, which is every night at midnight, I can't see crap and I constantly worry about hitting something, but a guy's gotta work. When a car comes the other way, I have to squint till they pass by and if some guy with HID lights comes up behind me, I just pull over and let him pass.
At home, I turn a light on. I can't walk around the house with just a night light, or two, or three... An example is my Thrunite T10. I can't see a darned thing on low mode. I have to use medium to see to walk around. Outside, I want at least 600 lumens+ if I am walking with street lights and if it's the woods or a dark area, I want over 1500 lumens. Now you know why I love the MT-G2 leds.
When I was a kid I had great night vision, and in the dark with my eyes closed it was completely dark.
Many decades later, my irises don’t open nearly as wide in the dark (that’s why they tell you for binoculars how wide the exit pupil is — there’s no use buying binoculars with an ‘exit pupil’ wider than the pupils of your eyes at their widest).
And the lenses of the eye get yellowish with age, further cutting the light reaching the retina.
Thus the value of low level light for getting around at night — and no-blue, to protect the less robust sleep cycle, too.
