How low ? How often? How come?

Most likely around a little below 1 lumen. I have a wife and a daughter who are light sleepers.

At my age, I use it a couple of times a night… :cry: . Anything more than the lowest low wakes me up and I have trouble going back to sleep. My ‘head to the bathroom’ light is an early edition ‘Manker driver’ A01. Great tint, great moonlite.

I really think the necessary minimum is a function of an individuals eyes. I’ve noticed over the years that some people simply have better night vision than others.

Another low lumens light that I tolerate well is the Skilhunt H03. For its price and usefulness, I think that’s a very under rated light.

Unno, whut’s moonlight-mode on a Cometa?

In super-wide flood (ie, well-dispersed light, not concentrated into a hotspot like most reflector lights), that gets me decent brightness and a nice wide field-of-view.

Firefly mode on a SP10B was also good.

So… you need to distinguish brightness vs intensity. As above, my Cometa in full-flood might even have multiple lumens, but it’s spread out over a huge area, vs a (relatively) narrow spot from an SP10B.

My lowest is .36 on my Zebralight. It’s fun looking straight down the barrel of my flashlight but it really doesn’t serve a real function for me.

I find most low settings to be good enough for me if I need it in the night.

I’ve also developed a spider sense for the solid walnut foot of my bed after nearly breaking my toes on a few occasions soon after setting it up. It’s amazing what a pain can do to wake up your other senses!

I work in an optics lab and we usually keep the lights low. Stray light can compromise the data we are collecting. If I have to wright something down I use the lowest setting on my Zebralight SC600w MK3.

I use my Jetbeams RRT01 at weekend on “low levels” (I cannot measure, just twist the ring till I get the desired brightness, that is way below an Olight S1R Baton’s moonlight), so that I don’t disturb who’s sleeping at home.
During the week, I normally use a flashlight on moonlight (with a driver similar to the Astrolux X5/X6), with a diffuser, bedstanding to avoid too much light before sleeping.
And I normally tend to use ML modes if I wake up during the night.

My 458 Ham’r in moon mode makes 5.175 lumens. Seemingly bright for a moon mode but the thing has 17 emitters, 5 drivers… totally amazing the lowest output is so low!

<—— my Avatar is the Ham’r in moon mode.

I use the low on a zanflare f1 or blf a6 for my bedside light. It often stays on all night.

I’m 47 and i want at least 40-ish lumen from a light.
The lowest mode on the Astrolux A01 for example, is totally pointless for me.
It’s clear that others can navigate with much less light.
I haven’t actually tried what the minimum useful light output is for me, though.
When i need it, i grab a light and usually go for around 100 lumen or 1 Watt (i guesstimate), but this depends on the light too.

1 lumen +/-, anything less and these old eyes struggle. But for me only in familiar places like bedroom at night (daily) or inside tent, etc. When in an unfamiliar hotel or outside at campground, I need a little more so that I don’t trip or run into obstacles that might be at the peripheral to vision or a moonlight level beam.

And as some have indicated, it doesn’t disturb night vision adjustment and/or sleep pattern.


I have a Nitecore Tube attached to my lanyard which I fly with. It’s super lightweight so I don’t notice it behind my ID badge and RFID card.

You would be surprised how bright 1 lumen is after flying in complete darkness with minimal instrument lights on for hours at a time. I need to find a similar light that can go sub-lumen.

I rely on the pee light using a single amber LED as the light source, and it’s plenty bright.

Contrast sensitivity declines with age, and the ‘noise’ in the visual system increases. Dagnabbit.

Yeh, kinda like in a super quiet room with so little noise that you can hear your own heartbeat, sometimes you’ll hear “white noise” that seems to get intensely “loud”, probably just because your internal gain gets cranked up to 11.

Amazing just how noisy absolute silence can be…

So far looks like Polite P’ers is winning.

I am still what I would consider a polite p’er, it just takes me more light to see. And if I am up to john it probably cause my wife just went and woke me up.

Moonlight on my D4 looks to be 1-2 lumens, which is brighter than I’d like when I have to get up late at night to check on the kids, etc, but fine for non-adapted eyes for walking around a familiar area.

The 0.1 lumens on my Armytek Tiara is a pretty good level for indoors when my eyes are completely adjusted, but is definitely dim if my eyes are not adjusted.

I also like around 0.1 lumens as a nightlight when sleeping in an unfamiliar place.

That could be tinnitus.
Various ways to get that.
Clubbing for example.

Same goes for visual. Next time you’re on the bowl (quiet, well-lit, no motion anywhere), rest your head in your hands and keep your whole body as absolutely still as possible, and also focus your eyes on one fixed point (intersection of tiles, etc.), even forcing yourself to do so (your eyes will naturally “jitter” to prevent this effect).

What you’ll see is “white-out”, when the image you’re seeing will be so static that it’ll fade to white. The slightest bit of motion/jitter pulls back the actual image. Kinda like how a T. Rex mainly sees motion, but not static images.

Oh, I’ve had ringing in my ears from exposure to loud sounds, so I know what that sounds like, and can appreciate tinnitus (typically a constant high pitched tone or buzzing), but I’m pretty sure it’s not that.

Oh, and absolutely DO NOT BLINK when trying for white-out. ANY change in the image, even a few “pixels” in any direction, pulls back the static image. You need to make the image as still and unchanging as possible, at least 10sec or more.

I think i have tinnitus, and it’s just noise, full frequency spectrum, but louder in the higher regions.
I used to be a sound guy for DJ’s and also bartender (and technician) in the legendary Blauwe Aanslag basement.
Smoking ‘herbs’, drinking and everything else may have made it worse too… The roaring 20s… :person_facepalming:
Still, my hearing is quite good.
But the background noise is always there…
I’m used to it though.

But back to vision, i may have done some damage with big black light lamps (in that same basement)…
We used to hire a couple of big fat ones for the Goa parties.
Great for the fluo decorations they brought, and everyone (everything) looked weird, of course…
Or maybe it was the stroboscopes for the Tekno parties…

I’m gonna try it some time, what is the minimum but still useful to me.

Can relate to this. :person_facepalming:

My Reylight Pineapple Mini lives on my nightstand.

The Mini is my go to at night and in the morning when I don’t want to disturb my wife and I rarely use more than the .1 lemon moonlight mode (on AAA) when getting dressed for work, etc.

I have many other lights around, but the Mini is used a ton. Was surprised the output is that low, could have guessed it was like 1-3 vs. 0.1