I sure hope itās a lot more than 500 lumens, that isnāt much for times where youāre trying to light up a decent sized camp. That said, when itās pitch black out, your eyes adjust pretty well to lower light levels.
I have not measured it for lumens accurately, but it is the second brightest LED lantern i have (out of dozens of modded ones i built & modded) the problem is it can not be pushed to bright because of its compact size, ( there is not enough heat-sinking metal to prevent it from over heating. Lanterns differ from flashlights in that lanterns run continuously for hours at a time. Even with just two 7135 chips, on high, (at .700 amps) after a hour running the solid aluminum heatsink top gets hot. When i ran it with three 7135s at 1.05 amps, it got to hot to hold ot touch after a hour. it produces more light output thana 40 watt Incandescent light bulb, to push it brighter woudl require a much larger finned top heatsink. (thus it wonāt be pocket-sized anymore.
I am actually not sure what 500 lumens from this lantern will look like. I am sure that it will be more than enough for campfires and cat fishing on the riverbank. If I need more light I will use more than one lantern.
The demonstration photos in the OP shows how bright it is to an extent. ( the first photos shows its brighter than a Coleman Fuel pressure camp lantern.
Iām extremely excited for this lantern. Please take your time and do it right. I think most of us are plenty patient and just want a polished end product. Thank you for tackling this project!
I am changing jobs in 3 weeks, so I have to concentrate on that for the next few weeks,. but after the change over I will have much more free time to focus on the lantern project finally. ( considering over the last year my life has been chaos with nearly no free time to work on projects.
According to the CREE PCT, a XP-L V3 @700mAh would produce about 331 lumens. I prefer brighter, but as has been said, a lantern is different from a flashlight, and that may be plenty of light, if the lantern is well designed to put the light where it is needed.
Interestingly, a XP-G3 S6 would give us ~373lm @700mAh, and have a lower Vf than the XP-L V3, and is probably cheaper to buy.
I havenāt really thought about emitter choice for this projectā¦ Iām not very involved in the hardware. Maybe XP-G3 would be good, or maybe 219c, or maybe XP-L or XP-L2, or ā¦ etc. I hope itāll be high-CRI though, and hopefully no warmer than 4000K. 219c 4000K could be good.
Itās worth mentioning that high CRI isnāt going to be as efficient.