That's exactly why I want a V10A or V20A, for more precise adjustment in the low range with a rediculous low low. That and being able to set it to low before turning it on, really trips my trigger. The cost and tint are my only hold backs.
Ok well this is all nice talking 100 lights let get to budget lights .. what lights have a real usable low without PWM and are under 25 $ How about that for making life tough ?? birthday candle aside ..wooden match notwithstanding .
What about the Akoray programable What are the odds of anything not having horrible pwm which bothers me to no end ..making my baby ITP virtually unusable or the edit 16340 baby zoom ..same thing pwm pwm pwm .
what cheap lights are there with low lows ??(and no nasty pwm).???
Solitaire? 
That is a good question, and certainly more affordable.
Like I said, the infinity mag. Two alkies, with a strip of tape connecting them (for protection against leaks), a mini-mag, and a 5mm LED. Bore out the reflector, and use that, or do what I did, use a Minimag Rebel head, and some scotch tape to fix up the threads (the Rebel head has a larger internal width), and sand the entire dome off the LED. That way, the reflector focuses the LED well, into a traditional flashlight beam. I'm probably gonna switch to the normal head once I get my hands on some Nichia GS, for some halfway decent CRI. Infinite runtime FTW! Well, maybe a year or so straight... if they don't leak first.
I must confess - for a while I obsessed with a low low flashlight. Ultrafire's UF-H2b was too high for me. Then I found the perfect flashlight - my cell. But even the cell was too bright.
So, if someone want a really low Android flashlight, there is an app called Screen Filter that will dim your screen to nothing (literally, so beware). It is a bit more expensive, but I already needed a smartphone (and I believe several of you have a similar phone) for daytime stuff.
So my flashlight line up is:
Phone - Fauxton - UF-H2b - Skyray S-R5
This solves every need I have... But after seeing this post I want a V10A....
Well i need to ammend that thought and say budget and really good low low with no pwm and a decent high as well .. we can sit around and talk about very expensive lights that do it and cheap garbage that does a low low low but it has to be a flashlight too not a joule thief .. it needs to turn around and do at least 100 lumens too .
I'm with you Boaz, hope our prayers are answered soon. I am surprised there aren't more options based on a potentiometer(sp). I know these are fairly cheap, they must be hard to implement.
Its impossible to use a pot. in a light-they only take a very small amount of power. All the "infinite" output lights use 8 byte microprocessor controllers, so 256 modes, or something less.
Your probably right, I thought I had heard a T1A used that approach, and knowing the part in general is fairly cheap...
The T1A puts out like 70 measly lumens of blue-green, donut holed light....
If we can put the pot into the torch, I Know you can use the $3 single mode drivers based on the AX2002 or the PT4105 chip and have a low LOWER than the V10R picture above, and the PERFECT ramping rate (TRUE visually linear ramp) to 100% (700 or 1000mA). I currently run that setup in a battery pack and its seriously awesome. I have been thinking of how to implement this into a torch though, and it always ends up not being possible, or just plain ugly.
(btw i consider sticking a knob out of the torch (like they do for mags) ugly. I want something where you twist the head and it ramps brightness. Ive considered the "hotpots" - membrane based pots from sparkfun for example, but they cost as much as the torch :/
How about two buttons like a vb 16 ?
The latest iTP A3 does 1000 Hz PWM and the A2 does around 2400 Hz PWM. It's not noticable by ordinary humans.
2 buttons require a MCU to handle the interface, that is either not available, or is beyond the ability of most DIYers by going into programming territory.. It is possible though, but by that stage you are already beyond most budget lights? maybe.
Is there a really small POT that works like a regular interior light dimmer, click on/off, turn to dim?
Physically there are potentiometers with a switch at the low end. The switch can handle up to a couple hundred milliamps, maybe up to an amp tops. You could then connect the pot to the circuitboard described earlier.
But you still have the problem of physically installing the potentiometer into the torch.
If your thinking of using the wall type dimmers, I don't think its as simple as putting one of those in, and its likely it wont work as well. Those have a potentiometer for the knob, but thats usually connected to a circuit to do the dimming of Mains power.
And those almost certainly have significant parasitic drain in "off".
Please explain your aversion to Pulse Width Modulation. Do you have compact fluorescents in your house? They flash at 120 Hz. Do you watch TV? Go to the movies? None of them generate continous light.
A major advantage to PWM, that has been rarely, if ever, mentioned here, is the lack of colour shift. All leds suffer from it at low currents that some people find it objectional. If they are fed a high current in pulses there is zero colour shift.
Cheers,
Angus
I think you meant 8 BIT. Don't forget that they can also operate on 16 bit words, so the limit would be not 256 levels but more like 2^16 or 65536 levels if needed. Don't knock 256 discrete light levels anyway. How many grey levels does your digital camera generate per colour channel? 256? Way more than our eyes can even distinguish.
I just breadboarded a pic 12f683 driving a small led to test its pwm module. It easily generates 1 microsecond pulses at 1000 per second, in increments of 1 microsecond. In other words at least 1000 discrete light levels can be produced.
Then I wrote a program that alternated the brightness of the led between two different levels until I could finally see a difference. It turned out that starting at 500 microsec, it took a value of 520 before I could determine the second was barely brighter, that is a 4% difference.
If that holds across all brightnesses then if 1.04^n = 100, then only n = 118 discrete levels should be needed, at least for my old eyes. So 256 levels is way more than enough.
Cheers,
Angus
If you want perfect modes why not follow Tido's thread http://budgetlightforum.cz.cc/node/799 and do it yourself?
For example the pwm module in the pic12f683 has a range of at least 1000 to one. If used in a 100 lumen flashlight then the lowest possible level would be 0.1 lumen. Is that low enough?
Cheers,
Angus