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

This
Plus, others who really care enough can learn to flash your own firmwares so everything is exactly how you want it. It’s intimidating at first, but in the end very simple.

I don’t buy flashlights anymore, I buy hosts.

The problem is, as it has always been. People. Some just like to cause trouble. Some like to see problems develop and arguments come up. Some live to see others get upset or cause controversy. Here, in a bar, in a home, at work, on the street, on the phone, in a war, there’s always someone to stir the pot and others to jump in and add to it. That’s all it is and it’s a waste of time as always.

AGREED,Very well said “OL”.

We can’t change anyone but ourselves,nothing more needs to be said, it would be a waste of time and energy! :bigsmile:

In case it might help, the Baton.c firmware unlocks to the last-used mode instead of moon.

This bothers me too. As O-L said, it’s a people problem and some people like to cause controversy. That’s how things have always been, but the internet has a knack for amplifying this sort of thing from a nuisance to a danger. Fortunately BLF is pretty resistant to drama, but it’s still worth a bit of conscious effort on our parts to try not to weaponize the conversation so our friendly admin doesn’t have to get involved.

For my practical use, just 1 floody lumen makes a good low. At the other end 500 Lumen is about as bright as I ever need. I don’t work in a coal mine or find I need to light things up more than 200 feet away or compete with the sun , so this range has me covered for 99.99%.

Furthermore…. all lights brighter than about 1000 Lumen should be banned or restricted to special permit use only. There is just no reason why common civilians should be allowed to use so much light. Someone could be temporarily blinded and it’s just gross light pollution. Too much attention is paid to these big bright monsters here.

And for those that think they can get around with these sub-lumen modes, they should be required to wear a helmet. It’s just too dangerous to be stumbling around in the dark this way. Someone could get hurt.

That works for me. Now I’m taking my toys and going home. :expressionless:

You don’t spend enough time in total darkness. Waking from total sleep with no light source. That’s when sublumen modes rule.

Or being subtle in public, or a meeting, or in the car on a road trip…… etc…

Buy what works for you.

I like my BLF X6 on low ( among others).
If I need more light I ramp it up.
I like the ability to flood everything and still light a small area when I need to.
I use low more than high unless I’m trying to impress newbys.

In the other place and 73% of those polled are either 'love it top priority' or 'desirable - a pro feature' voters

see: http://www.candlepowerforums.com/vb/showthread.php?341755-Sub-Lumen-quot-Moonlight-quot-Mode-Poll

Like /\

Hail and well met, fellow Freak Of Nature!

I try to push the fact that, given the embarrassing “State Of The Art” of the fetid fecal matter we optimistically call “BATTERIES”, that light will be plenty dim enough, plenty soon enough, that there’s no point making it dim on purpose!

When we get useful, modern batteries, small & light enough to be portable, with enough power & capacity to be interesting, I’ll still pull out that impulse-buy dispose-a-light (with a momentary switch and the kind of form factor I can bite for light) for any time I actually “Need” a dim flashlight. Especially if it’s red. And if they ever quit making them, a .002-cent Red LED and salvaged CMOS/watch/hearing-aid battery will do just fine. And there’s always the Mag Solitaire if you really must spend Good Money to have the least amount of light possible…

But I get that I’m a freak, because I almost never turn a flashlight ON with a click. Most of my torch usage is Momentary, although I do click them on often enough that I like that feature. If I am around others & don’t want to bother anyone, my hands & fingers or other body parts (stop giggling, not ALL other body parts!) do a perfect job of keeping the surroundings au naturel for that moment.

To address another poster’s comment, I’m also a freak for not liking the pencil-beam “thrower” lights. I have never been able to get myself to the place where that “thrower” is illuminating, because the useful light is always Somewhere Else. Throws a mile?? Great. When you get there, the illumination is still a mile away! As noted earlier, at useful-working distances that freakishly-intense hot spot overdrives the eyes so that nothing else is visible, and the tiny spot only illuminates such a uselessly small area that I end up literally “throwing” them, either in the trash, in the woods, AT someone, or I just give them away to n00bz. Or (thanks to y’all here), now I can mod them!

OTOH, I have changed my mind about the Blinky mode, having used it to Good Effect in Bad Traffic. I would never want to be anywhere near the Zombie Horde, thumbing their “smart phones”, oblivious to the rest of us, at night, without a super-bright strobe!

Hilarious post :bigsmile:

10 lumens is not painfully bright FFS. And no, it won’t annoy others, unless those people annoy so easily that simply moving with no light at all also annoys them.

Seriously, I love torches and don’t object to moonlight modes. But 1000’s and 1000’s and 1000’s of people manage perfectly fine, by simply turning on the bedroom/house lights.

Nobody actually “needs” a moonlight mode. This doesn’t mean there aren’t people who “want” a moonlight mode and can make successful use of them. But they aren’t the same thing.

And lets face it, there are parts of the world where at certain points in the year it doesn’t even get dark… yet those people still manage to sleep and live normally. So waking up in the middle of the night to something much brighter than moonlight really isn’t the issue people are trying to make it out to be.

Actually I think they make a valid point. Moonlight is something you want assurance you can access instantly without cycling through the other modes.

BUT…. for a majority of people you don’t want it as the default when you turn a torch on generally.

A hidden, but instantly accessible from off moonlight is really the only type worth having.

There are simply no reasons why you’d go from Turbo to moonlight.

I know one reason: You have to because a bad user interface...

It can be handled by pressing the head of the light to your hand, to reduce the light if you have to cycle through high modes to reach the moonlight.

I am very fond of my Olight S20-L2, even though the light is a bit on the cool side. Instant moonlight on demand.

UI is the most important feature on a light that has “specialist” modes IMO.

I have Qlite p60 I use a lot, set to 4 modes because I wanted the moonlight mode. While I do use it, I find it massively compromised.

Partly because you can’t dictate what mode it turns on with. But more annoyingly you can’t go:

Moonlight -> Low -> Moonlight.

Something I find I’d like to do quite often.

Hello fellow members, at the moment i am working at construction yard at night in the middle of nowhere, where i am guarding some things not to be stolen. I stuck all the night in the car, and i don’t use any tablets or laptops. Most of the time, i am reading. I recently bought Armytek Wizzard neutral 4000K version. The lowest setting is about 3 lumens. When i read books with glossy pages, it is hard to read with more lumens, because the light reflects, from the glossy pages. I also have Nitecore HC50, and i used red light on it for reading, but i noticed, that later if some car came across the road, i saw the light from the car more green, than yellow( all colours were distorted).
The Wizzard and its low mode is perfect for me, it has nice yellow tint on a white pages. I also like, that with long press on the switch, i immediately choose “moonlight”, and not blind myself…and what is also great is, that battery lasts for ages… :slight_smile:

see the poll in the other place

This means that less than 1 person in 20 dislikes it - and aren't they a vocal lot.

I love moonlight and where I live there are no streetlights so it is very dark. I use moonlight so I can go to the toilet in the middle of the night without waking the wife, or falling over the dog.

moonlight to me is my pee light.

if I’m blind I’m prolly awake the whole night

and the toilet light is too bright my eyes hurt even when closed

You’d like to think so, and the older you get, the less you’d notice.
But the longer that getting older thing goes on, the closer we get to being grouchy about people who bother us with stuff we don’t want to know about.

Here’s some more stuff you ought to know about, if only for the sake of the grandchildren:

That’s why we use amber LED nightlights around the house — no blue, and low brightness.

Good for turtles too: Sea Turtle Hatchlings Saved by LED Lights Funded by Deepwater Horizon Fines - Scientific American Blog Network