Lots of beamshots, mainly incandescent

LED Flashlights – General Info
1

Hi there.

Completely new here and I thought I would enter with a bang ;)

I simply love beamshots as we all do, so I thought I would take all my light and go outside for a couple of hours and take some beamshots of them. Mind you, I don't own a crazy amount of flashlights and I've recently come to love the old burning stuff we like to call incandescent, so this beamshots might not be suitable for YOU. Or maybe it is, you might have a love for incandescent without even knowing it. Take a look at these beamshots and decide for your self. :)

As I said, I took all the lights I own and a couple of different bulbs for the incandescent ones so not all of these lights are what I would call usable lights. But in the case of the Maglite 2C with stock bulb you can see what an difference an easy mod can do and actually make the light to a usable one. The Mini Maglite is just there to show how awful it is. :)

Oh, and as we all do I to must tell the short (kind of...) tale of my flashlight interest.
I've been working as a security guard for the last 8 years and since the flashlights is such an important part of the work I started too look for a replacement for the bulky MagCharger that the company supplied us with. After a couple of bad lights (that either is broken or given away) I bought the Fenix L2D Q5. A tad bit on the expensive side but what a light! I couldn't belive that this little light could give me so many lumens out of this small package, need I say that the MagCharger from there on stayed in the charger in the office?
I loved the cool blue tint of the light but after a while I started to wonder what all the fuss "on the other place" was about regarding the neutral tint lights. I had to try one so I bought the Romisen RC-N3 in warm white from ShiningBeam (great store!) and from there on I decided to never buy a single cool white flashlight again.
To my eyes the neutral whites is just superb in every single way. The slight loss in lumens is EASILY compensated by the superb colour rendition and the neutral lights almost looks brighter to me.
From the neutral lights I started to experiment with overdriven incandescents and found the truth :) Now the UltraFire WF-500 with the Lumens Facotry bulb is easily my favourite light. It's crazy bright with great colour rendition and OK runtime (the only drawback with incandescents). The dream light right now actually is an MagCharger so you could say that I'm right back where I started.


So there you have it. An incandescent lover with to many expensive lights. I hope you can accept me anyway. ;)
Anyways, on with the beamshots!

All photos is taken with an compact Canon IXUS 70 with the same settings.

ISO 100

2.5s Shutter speed

Colour Balance set to Day Light

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First set is about 20 meters from the tree

Control Shot

Mini Maglite


Romisen RC-N3 WW with 16340

Romisen RC-N3 WW with 2*AA

Fenix L0D with 10440

Fenix L0D with NiMH AAA

Fenix L2D Q5 - Turbo to Low

EagleTac T10LC2 NW - High and Low

EagleTac T20C2 NW - High and Medium

TrustFire M41 - High and Low

Spark ST6 280OW - High to Low

Maglite 2C with generic 2.8V bulb. Focus and Flood

Maglite 2C with original bulb. Focus and Flood

Maglite 2C with generic 5.5V 1A bulb. Focus and Flood

Maglite 2C with 5cell Xenon bulb. Focus and flood

UltraFire WF-500 with original bulb

UltraFire WF-500 with generic 6V 10W bulb

UltraFire WF-500 with Philips 7388

UltraFire WF-500 with Lumens Factory HO-R5

Superfire WF-501B with GP G90 bulb


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The next set is taken about 50 meters from the building. Same settings as above.

Control Shot

Mini Maglite

Romisen RC-N3 WW with 16340

Romisen RC-N3 WW with 2*AA

Fenix L0D with 10440

Fenix L0D with NiMH AAA

Fenix L2D Q5 - Turbo to Low

EagleTac T10LC2 NW - High and Low

EagleTac T20C2 NW - High and Medium

TrustFire M41 - High and Low

Spark ST6 280OW - High to Low

Maglite 2C with generic 2.8V bulb. Focus

Maglite 2C with original bulb. Focus

Maglite 2C with generic 5.5V 1A bulb. Focus

Maglite 2C with 5cell Xenon bulb. Focus and Flood

UltraFire WF-500 with original bulb

UltraFire WF-500 with generic 6V 10W bulb

UltraFire WF-500 with Philips 7388

UltraFire WF-500 with Lumens Factory HO-R5

SuperFire WF-501B with GP G90 bulb

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The next set is taken about 100 meters from the building. Same settings as above. This time I only took the most powerful lights.

Control Shot

EagleTac T10LC2 NW - High

EagleTac T20C2 NW - High

TrustFire M41 - High

Spark ST6 280OW - High

Maglite 2C with 5cell Xenon bulb. Focus

UltraFire WF-500 with original bulb

UltaFire WF-500 with Philips 7388

UltraFire WF-500 with Lumens Factory HO-R5


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Some notes:

The EagleTac T10LC2 is my go to light. Bright enough, good runtime and perfect combination of hotspot and flood.

The TrustFire M41 is bright but i never use it since i can't stand the blue tint.

Running the Romisen RC-N3WW and Fenix L0D on lithium batteries gives a great boost in brightness and the lights can handle it without any problems. In fact, I carry the Fenix L0D with my keys and have been doing so for many years now, most of them with a 10440 in it. Still works great. Superb light.

The Maglite 2C is a fun light to play around with, but there's no arguing that the 5cell Xenon bulb is the best choice. It's the one with the best focus and it's bright to.

The UltraFire WF-500 is BRIGHT, especially with the Lumens Factory bulb. A ta bit expensive but oh so fun to play with. On the photos it might look like I haven't angled the Philips 7388 properly but that's only due to the floodines of the bulb. It's really bright but almost without any spot.

The SuperFire WF501-B is poorly built but very cheap and a good light to try if you wonder if incandescents might be for you. If you already have an P60 host just buy the bulb and 2 16340 batteries. The batterytime is a joke but oh the colours! And as you might see, the photos is taken at a different day but I tried to place the camera at the same spot.

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There you have it! Hope you enjoyed the photos and please come with suggestions on how to improve them.

Cheers!

2

Hi Volk

Welcome to BLF!

Thanks for the beamshots - I know just how much of a pain it can be to get them sorted out. I looked up your country as the first picture could be on the edge of one of the less (the least?) desirable suburbs of my city.

What sort of life do you get out of the Philips bulb in the WF-500?

3

That Lumens Factory bulb is a real barn burner-I've got a IMR-9 on the way to me, along with two IMR-18350's.... 15 min runtime FTW! Nice pics-why no ROP with that Maglite?

4

The Sparks are nice-even if Zebralights are more useful.

5

I certainly can't fault you for not liking cool blue tints. They're not for everybody. There's nothing wrong with incandescents, either. They're short-lived and power hungry, but you can see even in photos the sort of contrast they afford over a cool tinted LED.

I settled on neutral LEDs as my preferred compromise between contrast and efficiency. In a setting like the woods, I find warmer tints aid depth perception and allow me to identify what I'm looking at faster.

6

Don: Thanks! Well, this time of year I guess the countryside looks almost all the same regardless of country. Gray :) And this was my first try at making many beamshots and if I knew beforehand how much work It would be I'm not sure I would have gone trough with it. But in the end it certainly was fun.

Sadly I can't answer you regarding the Philips bulb since I almost never use it. The quality on the bulbs DX sells is just to bad. They are obviously handmade and of the 2 I've bought only one worked and that's barely. I have to give the light a small whack to make the bulb lighten, and to get some kind of focus I have it screwed about half a turn in the reflector. To unreliable to use.

srfreddy: Oh, an IMR-9. Got a bit jealous of you now =) I would love to have one of those but the wallet doesn't, to big of an investment with a good host and batteries at the moment. Regarding batteries, didn't know there were IMR-18350 now. Newly released?

I'm thinking about buying some ROP bulbs. Not sure my unprotected green UltraFire would handle the current very well though. I'm waiting for a new reflector from KD so I'm probably going to make one later on.

Love the Spark. Great UI, 18650 battery and good output.

frills: Couldn't agree more. For everyday use the EagleTac T10LC2 is just great with it's neutral tint, but when I really need a lot of light the UltraFire is great to have even though it only give me around 40 min of runtime.

Don't get me wrong, there's nothing wrong with cool blue tints, they are just not for me. I envy those who likes them since the market is much bigger for them. Not many warm or neutral whites on DX and KD... :(

7

Yep, Lighthound just got the first shipment today. A dealer on CPF Marketplace sold out in like 3 hours...... I got my IMR-9 for $12 shipped, with less than an hour on it on the marketplace. A decent setup is kinda expensive- L2+UCL lens+2 IMR 18350s+ 2 IMR 18500s+ IMR-9 bulb= almost $70! I need the IMR 18500's for extended runtimes of almost 25 minutes!

8

Amazing work here, Volk :O Thanks for all those shots. That ML with 5 cell xenon is a good thrower

9

Aloha and welcome to BLF Volk!

That's a pretty impressive 1st post. Good job!

10

good work thank you

11

Great pictorial and welcome. :)

12

is that maglite bulb just the one off their site for 4.19$?

13

Thanks for the warm welcome guys!

Yeah, the Maglite in this form is quite a nice light. Great throw, an OK amount of lumens and the current draw is around 1A so I should be able to squeeze out about 2 hours of runtime. A really nice incandescent package.

The bulb is an 5 cell Magnum Star Xenon bulb. It's overdriven with 2 18650 batteries so I don't know how long bulblife I'm going to have.

14

The Magnumstars are sooo......crappy QC? every other one has an uncentered filament.

15

Oh, didn't know that actually. I have only tried this one bulb and it focuses good. Before I removed the besel I could focus it perfect with a very bright hotspot, so I wonder if bad focus might be due to bad alignment with the reflector which might be possible to correct with a bit of try and error.

But yeah, crappy QC could certainly be a more possible explanation.

16

UltraFire WF-500 with Lumens Factory HO-R5 is nice beamshot. good work for you.

17

Well thank you. :)

Yeah, the Lumens Factory bulb is really nice. Bright and (incandescent)white, just perfect for outdoor use.

The other night a couple of Roe Deers ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roe_Deer ) were eating on the field shown in the pictures. A perfect opportunity to use the HO-R5 to watch them eat and socialising I thought. Not they, they ran like crazy when I fired the light in their direction, must have thought a car was heading for them

18

Good pics, thanks :slight_smile: