Yes! It is hard to find really cold lights too!
Sorry about that…I was ranting… I did not mean to offend at all.
It is true quick charges reduce cell life…so I almost never do it. But it is nice to be able to.
I prefer AA and single AAA lights but 8 AA is too much.
Twisties are awful, with a few exceptions.
Rotary switches are wonderful, so easy to use. Lights with + and - switches are great too.
Turbo mode is silly. It isn’t much use in practice, drains the battery fast and wastes a mode level.
I don’t like twisty lights much either…but I got a free Olight 3e eos and I liked it so much I bought a couple more!
Unlike previous twisty lights I owned it has giant square anodized threads that after a bit of silicone grease
feel great! It makes a good cell holder too when traveling. I never would have bought it…but after getting
it initially…I just love it. Twisty lights on fine threads…not cool.
I have mostly AA and AAA lights too. 3 of them are 4 AA lights that have great runtime when the power is out.
8 is too many.
I'm not sold on high CRI. While I'm planning to make a high CRI light just for the sake of doing it, I don't expect any of my daily carries to be high CRI until the technology improves.
Wellp, you always got those 10000K aquarium LEDs…
Go crazy.
They are not white! Carbon arcs produce great light. Not exactly efficient though!
Sure they are. Blue LEDs with minimal phosphor.
Only they’re well beyond Angry Blue™ and well into the Homicidally Blue™.
Figure they’re about –4 on the Cree/ansiwhite scale.
If you remove the phosphor layer, the light becomes extremely blue. Or even violet, really. Possibly even a little ultraviolet, but it’s hard to say for sure.
Here’s how a Cree XHP50.2 looks without the phosphor…
… and how it looks while it’s powered on:
There is no UV in the 450nm Royal Blue spectrum, there is just the perception of very blue.
Flashlights should have an external charger.
Lemme explain.
I’m always after compact flashlights. Integrated charging circuits take up space and I never saw one with decent amps.
So my wish is flashlight with a charging cradle that charges with the max allowable amps the cell or cells in the flashlight can handle. Even if it reduces charging cycles.
I got plenty of amps in my otherwise cigaret lighter in my vehicles. So amps should be no issue.
True. I don’t see any UV in the royal blue Cree emitters I’ve tried. This damaged XHP50 looks different though, more purple. I haven’t measured it in a spectrometer though. I should find a way to do that.
What improvements in the technology are you looking for?
The way to sum it up perfectly would be "95+ CRI Luxeon V"
It has low forward voltage so a strong single cell can run it to its max, it has high output (nudging out the SST40), it doesn't burn its bond wires at 9A like the SST40, There's almost no tint shift whatsoever throughout the beam, and the tint is fantastic to my eyes (for the 4000k at least, I haven't tried the others).
But really, I'd like higher output and good tint (and tint uniformity). As well as good efficiency.
The better bins of SST20 hold promise. I could put 219b in a triple or quad. I could slice a DOGFARTS lh351d. I could put Lee minus green filters on a few emitters. But mostly, my Luxeons are fine.
That’s literally never going to happen, in terms of efficiency of course.
The current high output, high efficiency LEDs like the SST-40 and Luxeon V only come in 70CRI variants.
If these LEDs would come in high CRI variants, their VF would be insanely low, but the high output would come down by quite a bit, etc.
Unpopular opinion:
Your “aircraft grade aluminum” is_ not worth anything_ in terms of ruggedness but you were just too lazy to add on some polymer armor in critical spots which would increase its drop resistance from 1,5 meters to 20 meters.
Also: How about a light in high viz yellow or orange for those who actuall work lights to death and not just admire them sitting pretty on a shelf?
I mean, anodized aluminium is extremely tough, especially with thicknesses of 30um+.
The anodized layer is almost as hard as diamond.
But I agree.
Some small silicone O-rings around certain points would help immensely in shock absorption.
There will always be a tradeoff between quality and quantity of light.
IIRC doesn’t the Luxeon V require a board with a footprint different from 35x35? That’s a big downside for me and a lot of people, emitters can be cheap but buying lots of additional MCPCBs adds up cost quickly.
I'm hoping that someday, LEDs will have advanced to where 95+CRI is like today's Luxeon V (and, yeah sure, standard footprint too). Maybe the 70CRI by then will be that much better than today's Luxeon V, too.
3Tronics did some lights like that:
It’d be nice to get some more interesting finishes on production lights though, instead of only modded lights.