Dear lumen and candela obsessives, illumination technics scholars and flashlight lovers,
I fell down a rabbit hole reading intensively for weeks on this forum and other places about flashlights after some stressful nightriding in the hills with a too dim and brief shining mini-light.
Could you advise me in my quest? I cannot arrive at a dependable conclusion about which light is most suitable and efficient for nightly gravel rides in hilly forests and fields while on wild camping travles without regular recharge.
Given the rare recharges and limited amount of spare batteries, I would try to ride for as long as possible on minimum lumen:
- For MINIMA, I imagine around 200-400lm and 75-150 usable throw should be sufficient to anticipate differnet surfaces, gradients, obstacles at 22km/hr to 34km/hr. Is that fair?
- For LED, I am leaning towards the SST40 though it is not the most efficient. Is it nonetheless an efficient compromise in the tradeoff between its Lm/Watt, useful throw and spill? (alternatives: SST70, XPL-hi, XHP35/50/70).
- For DRIVER the FT03 only has regulated current till 150lm, is that correct? Would such FET+1 driver be significantly less efficient at 200-400 lm? Which of the others would then be the best choice in driver: C8G, C8+, M21A ?
- For FIRMWARE stepped ramping seems best (unless a “low” or “medium” matches a fitting strenght): fine tuning, and with consistency. Now, is there a difference in efficiency with C8+’s 4mode/12group/Ramp.//C8G’s/FT03’s?
- For OPTICS, I am leaning towards the FT03 since with 1/3 more throw I may lower the needed lumens and save watts, correct? I read on BLF that the optics of Sofirn’s, Astrolux’s and Convoy’s C8 (+M21A) are identical, right?
- For Anti-GLARE, I could make a ‘reflector shield’ but perhaps there are TIR lenses that would do the trick much better? I could only find 17,20,33mm tir lensen. Can anyone find some for C8 models or for the FT03?
After comparing all reviews of beam patterns, throw and tail currents/runtimes I think of going with the FT03 SST40. Is that a good choice?
Many thanks for your invaluable help!