I've been a flashaholic for years and I still don't get the obsession with ultra low modes.

I also like ML and since I mostly build my own (and generally with Q-lite drivers) I set them up that way. When it’s pitch dark and my pupils are wide open, sub-lumen illumination is plenty for most purposes. Anything more is annoying and completely destroys my night vision. The .5 lumens ML from an S20 is downright harsh at 0300 when I’m awakened from a deep sleep.
Yes, it’s good to have the big output available but its been my habit to use the minimum required, and since I’m often out in the bush for days on end, to stretch battery life as much as possible.
Ain’t it great that we have so much to chose from that we can all have what we prefer? :slight_smile:

Well the same could be said for strobe and sos modes, but I doubt that people requested those. The moon mode is more useful than strobe and sos in my humble opinion. I also use it for night time navigation at home but I also use full power or medium when outside to light up where I’m going and to see stuff.

I think there are still plenty of options for you, for example single mode or an electronic switch with memory.
Having to cycle through strobe and sos modes in the main interface would be a pita very quickly but I don’t think one extra mode is that big of an issue personally

And that is the beauty of this forum; we can pool our knowledge, learn, and each take away exactly what we want.

I love it when a plan comes together!

Let me be perfectly clear, I don’t consider myself normal in my appreciation of flashlights but even though I don’t often use a moon mode I can stretch my imagination far enough to allow that others might use them more and would not consider that an indication of either normal or abnormal behavior. On a forum such as this you will commonly find those who want a low moon mode and those who don’t. Some want always start on high, some always on low. Tint snobs and run time vs start up lumens. Normal is not a really appropriate way to characterize things here. People who ride road bikes might want unique and specific blink modes while mtbr’s might not want any at all. I’d be willing to bet dollars to doughnuts that even among non flashaholics there are those who would like a low mode if they had one. My obsession is not with any particular mode but with choice. To me that’s as normal as can be.

I have a few lights that have a super low. I use one of them just about every day. Or should I say at night I use my Moon Mode.

So one may ax how do I use said feature? Following are a few, but not limited to examples:

Checkin on the 4 month old in the crib at night.
Navigating my crib at night. So as not to disturb the sleeping wife.
Checkin on dog in the kennel and letting her out every night and morning.
Peaking in on 2 week old kittens. They are so cute! :slight_smile: lol
Navigating my disaster of a man cave.
Y’all still reading this junk?
Checkin baby diaper for Poop during Fast and Furious 7. She let out a monster fart. Thought we had a emergency diaper change, but nope, just air.
:bigsmile:

So you see, some very important things for me to do that don’t require 10,000 Chinese lumen.
At the end of the day, I probably really only need a 200 lumen high. At the end of the day, get it? 8)

Low-low mode is to help me get myself to places where I can use my eyes for all they’re worth.

If you ever owned a 3-mode light, with low, medium and high, do you find yourself switching modes to a lower mode because you felt high was a little bright?

The environment must be dark enough to appreciate sub-lumens. You’d be in for a darkness- adjusted eyes by how much you can see with so little light.

Also, sub-lumens, or low lumens (about 3?) are great for the long runtime especially. I have read threads where people are trapped in blackouts, or disasters, and the low mode works perfectly in giving just enough light, and yet conserving battery.

I can see where a ML mode would be useful in theory but it just doesn’t happen enough in real life for me to warrent having it on any of my lights.

I believe strobe modes to so worthless as not to even bother talking about them.

The only times I’ve ever wanted a low mode was map reading on a camping trip at night and finding my way around a house in the middle of the night while others were sleeping. In both cases, I ended up just putting my hand over the lens and blocking 99% of the light for the few mins I needed the low.

It would be great if you could have every mode and feature you would ever desire in one light but sometimes more is actually less. If you have too many modes, too many features, the light becomes a hassle to use and overly complicated.

Now that we’ve got a newborn in the house, the “moonlight” mode (some don’t consider 1 lumen to be moonlight) on my EA41 has become invaluable. Like a few others have mentioned, it’s perfect for navigating the room while the wife is asleep to check on the baby. I used to use my Foursevens Mini MA on low, but even those 3 lumens is too bright to shine up at the ceiling. For me, I have really come to appreciate it. It’s a specialized use but that’s why it’s a specialized mode.

Like Speedsix, I dont have a lot of use for sub lumen “moonlight” or blinkies usually.

I am currently in love with Guppydrv firmware, which gives me the option of picking from 20+ mode groups that have what I need, and set turbo timer @ whatever I want.

Plus it uses OFF time memory. :heart_eyes:

In my opinion this is close to perfect UI, since people like the OP, and myself can choose 15/100, or 2/25/100, and others can get their moonlight on, or blinkies if they choose.

Jim

My S20 gets used the most as a night light on my computer desk. It's bright enough even with some ambient light from the streetlight at 2am to check on the baby if he wakes up. In fact, sometimes it's too bright so I switch to my T10S for the lower ML.

Another good use I discovered for ML mode is that it also doubles as a great locator beacon just in case you drop your light. Happened to me in the bedroom, found it easily (rolled under the bed) since it was on ML mode. Drain on ML is also negligible so you can do this for literally forever. (If you're like me you probably have enough batteries to run your light for a few days on high, and I just started with this hobby a few months back).

Although I have to agree that too many modes can be a pain as well if the UI requires the user to cycle through them. That's why I prefer UIs like the S20. ML and high from off.

I live in the woods. And in the winter, when it is cloudy and no moon, and you turn off all outside lights, it gets DARK outside.

Our eyes are very good at adapting to different light levels. But it takes several hours. So if you come from inside the house and bright electric light, you are practically blind. Then you need plenty of light to see.

But if you have let your eyes adapt during the evening, and there is a moon or clear skies with starlight, you can see all around you without problems. Well, you loose colour vision and have to move to see good. And in the shadows where the moon doesn't shine it can still be pretty dark. If you turn on a powerful flashlight then you loose all your nightvision, and can from that moment on only see what you shine your flashlight at. It is under these cirumstances it is good to have a sublumen flashlight. You can get a little extra light and keep your nightvision. Actually I often get by using only a single trit light source. That is enough to see nearby.

If I happen to have kept my nightvision, I like to be able to keep it. And use no high powered flashlight or sublumen. If I have lost my nightvision I have to have much more light, and use a higher mode.

However I always feel a little uncomfortable using a high mode flashlight outside, and not my natural nightvision, because then I can only see what I point my light at. Everything else is completely black. Indoors you can bounce the light on the ceiling and light the whole room easily. And you can use a low enough mode so the light lasts all night.

In an urban environment there are light all around and you most likely never get any real nightvision. There it makes less sense with really low modes. However indoors it can still be useful if you have it dark inside at night.

i have to read delivery slips in a car at night, sometimes while driving. really LOW mode is great for this.

i have little use for strobe, but, i know what its for… you strobe a bad guys eyes and immediately MOVE after cliking off the light… to the enemy, its like you made a “puff!” of smoke and sort of “vanished”.

i make digital night vision from scratch? and a really low mode Infrared zoomie is perfect for close up, otherwise you wash out.

also, i wouldnt mind 8 or 10 modes… all equidistant spaced… HIGH on down to almost nothing would be perfect for in the field. i could set the infrared zoomie for JUST as much infrared light as i needed to see whatever distance i am watching, so as to always have ENOUGH infrared, but, stretching my battery life for longer operating time scanning for ’yotes.

SOS is about useless though… we once put a little light with SOS mode on, on a hill, and no one came to see what the “distress call” was for, we thought it was funny… if people are ALREADY lookign for you? they will approach a lighter out of fluid, seeing the sparks with no flame, lmFao… but if no one is already LOOKING for you? you can SOS mode all night without anyone coming to see whats going on.

I like sub lumen modes for using at work as a train conductor, all shifts working on night trains one way or the other.
People can get very cranky if the lights too bright - I even had a guy go off and get angry and want to fight me for using my gerber recon which is all of 10 lumens at most (sadly for him he got removed by the police for aggressive behavior and missed his next train and wasted 48 hours off his life).
:bigsmile:
Also handy for just wandering around the home if I want to wander around at night with the lights off.

There is a lot of luck involved but still better than nothing. Also very few people know the morse code for SOS and many cheap lights have errors in the code.

The best use for moolight is letting the flashlight on tailstand shining at the ceiling. Nearly infinite runtime and really useful incase of emergency or for keeping an eye.

U NO LIKE NINJA MODE???

we cannot put the useless blinky modes you’ll never use in real life in the same realm of the useful sublumen modes, their utility are almost infinite, you can actually see and not be seen, pure stealth mode.
When i go running in the fields at night i usually have my headlamp off, if the moon permits it, i ’d rather prefer use just the actual enviromental light because you can see farther… A LOT, if you are using let’s say a 10 lumen light (or more) you won’t see at that distance as your eyes would be adapted to that light metering, also people will see you and call some snipers to kill you…. :face_with_monocle:

Let’s also say that you are crawling next to your wife/girlfriend and you don’t want to wake her up, with the room lights you do not use a TN36 in turbo mode with 6500+ lumen….just sayin…

Moonlight mode has one very important function, to identify the nutcases.

Always frustrated by moonmodes too! Adding moon to a 3 mode light can totally change the user interface for the worse.

A few years ago saw someone lying in a crosswalk — who had been hit by a hit-and-run driver — at dusk, in the rain, during commute hours.

I jumped off the bus. I had my one little CR123 flashlight with me.

I heard the sirens, someone had phoned in and told her not to move and she was holding still and aware so I — stood over her in the street and stopped traffic — stopped a three way intersection.

On strobe, that little light was enough to halt multiple vehicles and make approaching vehicles stop, back up to the last intersection and take another route.

I stood there until the emergency vehicles arrived.

She would have been run over several more times — likely I’d have been run over as well — but for the strobe light.

Try it yourself in any crosswalk on any busy street in the dark during a rainy rush hour — which means wintertime, for most folks, so you’ll have to remember this in six months.

Strobe, especially waved up and down/side to side, will get a distracted driver to suddenly focus and after a couple of seconds put on the brakes.

Steady light, even waved up and down/side to side — doesn’t get you noticed for several additional seconds
UNLESS it’s really bright — and if you shine a bright light into a driver’s eyes, in the dark, in the rain, in rush hour —

Do ya feel lucky?

I love the dark and spending hours camping in dark night areas and seeing the stars, and meteor trails, and satellites
and kangaroo mice and toads with their jeweled amazing eyes
and all the rest of what comes out at night when we’re not being bright enough to stop traffic.

And I kind of like having the confidence that I can stop traffic if I need to.

Each to his own.

“Wow” light is for me.
“Wimpy” light is for the wimps.