Why Are Soda Can Lights So Popular? Who Actually Use Them Regularly?

LED Flashlights – General Info
1

I like all lights as I’m a flashaholic like most here but I’m much more an EDC guy. Before everyone comes aboard and berates me here in my thread, I’m one of those that believes in “to each their own” and whatever you like, that’s great and I’m all for it. :slight_smile:

I was just wondering about all these “soda can” lights that most here are so enamored with. I bought one a few years ago, an original Nitecore EA4, (I still have it NIB), but it’s UI is so complicated, and it’s too big for EDC or general use, I put it away.

I just recently tried another, a Sofirn Q8 that everyone seems to rave about just to check it out. It’s a well built quality light like the EA4 and even more so but what a brick!

I also noticed many folks here have bought more than one Q8, (BLF version or otherwise), and some have bought several of them. I know in a multiple 18650 light you can get unbelievable output and in the soda can format, it’s shorter in length.

The problem is, (to me), they’re so heavy and cumbersome, what use are they except to show off or JUST to have? Maybe some of you can carry them in cargo pants or jacket pockets or attached to a belt but you sure would know it was there!

I really was just wondering what do you folks that actually USE THEM, how do you use them in real life applications?

No big deal here as I’m sure most will say, “just because I can” or other pat answers but was wondering who use them on a regular basis? Remember, as I said earlier, “to each their own” and we flashaholics want to own them all! :slight_smile:

2

Well, I actually use my BLF Q8 everyday, for multiple reasons.

1. With 4000k 90CRI LH351Ds, it makes for a great photography light, and makes everything pop. Not as well as SST-20s, but miles better than the stock XP-L.
It’s also my preferred outdoor light when I go outside in the forest or in the park during the night.

2. It has a low moonlight mode, making it the perfect night light with soft 4000k lighting.
It also has an absurdly low firefly mode, so works well as a beacon in hotels or during camping(used it twice actually).

3. The ramping UI makes it easy to put it on 1x7135 regulated brightness for an extremely long time. I mostly use it when I clean the house. Helps a lot during winter days.
I can just crank up the brightness a bit to help out.

4. Very good battery life. With 4x18650s, I barely charge it, and with no LED light on, at 15uA of current draw, I don’t have to worry about parasitic drain.

5. It has a great form factor. Fits well in my hand without being heavy.

6. Even with floody LH351Ds, it still throws a bunch.

7. It’s so useful to be able to get 5100 lumens of high CRI light. I can easily overwhelm light polluted areas when looking for stuff or looking outside.

8. Most importantly, I use it at my job, and it’s attracted a lot of interest towards better flashlights, and even better lighting :slight_smile:

3

I usually just keep compact EDC type lights but have a Meteor M43 with soft touch switch and USB charger built in as bedside/ table light.
Sometimes just use it to light a room.
Good capacity, fairly compact for carrying outside too.
Not too much by todays standards but still my brightest light and one of my favorites.

4

I’ve got a Sky Ray King. 9 x XM-L2 Coke can light.
Brilliant for the back deck and checking the pool and palms for bats.
Great spread. decent range.

But it only gets used as a “novelty” mostly,
coupla times a yr.
The Single/Double 26650’s are so much more practical I find.
Easier to hold. Carry and give much further range.

5

I bought my Q8 primarily to have as a ceiling-bounce light source for power outages, which we get after storms a few times a year, from hours to days. It works well with a lambency diffuser too, at least until I get a BLF Ultimate Lantern.

I use it a few times a week in the same capacity as a desk/accent light, usually when I work from home in the early am.

Beyond that it’s just fun to have to spot out in the back yard, when (car) camping, etc. Works well as a cool accent light outdoors as well. Have set it to light-up a canopy under a tree at parties a few times. It’s a champ. :+1:

6

I can agree with most of the points mentioned in post #2. Except:

- I own the XP-L HI version, that’s al most a thrower by sheer force.

- It is a bit too bulky for EDC-ing. For that I use a 14500 or an upgraded C8.

  • But it is my favourite what’s-going-on-in-my-backyard light. I will hit you with a ton of lumens!
7

All of mine are bone-stock, no mods, nothing fancy.

Still, it’s not an EDC light, obviously.

But if I “need” a kick-arse light to light up the backyard with, and my other beefier lights are elsewhere (ie, no AA/AAA lights that I just use as nightlights), then it’s the first light I grab.

Tighten the tailcap to “arm” it, then go light up whatever I want to.

8

I like the sodacan form factor. Small enough to fit into a jacket pocket for easy carry. Larger enough with enough batteries and emitters to have longer sustained runtimes at higher outputs.

I find them the most useful kind of light for hiking/trail walking.

9

I use my Q8 for hiking when I know I’m going out in the dark and I’ll be holding it the whole time. I have nothing else like it for sustained high output and combination of flood & throw. I love it.

10

BLF Q8 and Meteor M43 help me in lighting the garage, basement (reflection on the ceiling) or the park.

11

Have:
Sky Ray King 7-U2. BLF Q8. Astrolux MF01. Sofirn SF34. Sky Ray King 10-R8. ???Brand 8-R8.
Imalent DT70, and maybe the Firefoxes FF4 counts as a soda can.
So I guess I’m a fan.
The only one used every day is the DT70 for illuminating the backyard.

Cheers.

12

A lot of this might just come down to personal preference, but there’s one thing I don’t think I’ve ever heard outside of a very niche community like BLF, so I’ve got to ask…What is a “photography light” and how do you use a Q8 as one? I consider myself pretty knowledgeable about photography gear and techniques, and I know several professional photographers and have paid attention to what they were doing while they were doing photo shoots, but I never saw someone using any kind of handheld LED flashlight for lighting. If they need supplemental lighting, photographers would generally use a flash or multiple flashes. Do you somehow rig up your Q8 with a reflector to flash diffuse light at the subject at the brightness level appropriate to the exposure, in sync with the shutter? How often do you get this thing out for photos and what kind of photos? The whole “high CRI” thing is still a bit mystifying to me. To an extent, I can understand needing to see colors accurately for any medical use. I can also understand the pleasant mood that a warm, high CRI light evokes as opposed to a sterile, cold white light. But photography? How? Help me understand.

13

I helped developing the Q8 because it was a lot of fun to make, but it is by no means my favourite form factor, too large for almost all of my uses.
But still I ended up with quite a few of them, and they do get some use every now and then, the best use is lighting up complete areas at night during walks, finding things or showing things to others. Also as a lantern (with a colourful plastic camping cup on top) for mood lighting it has served a few times.

14

Ah that’s a question that I did not expect.

I still haven’t started my high CRI LED panel project, so I’m currently using the high CRI BLF Q8 as an poor man alternative for now.

I use a tofu box as a diffuser, as its diffusing properties and shape are excellent for making soft and slight directionnal lighting.
I also put it on a tripod so I can easily adjust its position.

I usually put the light on maximum brightness, and then adjust the exposure to get as low noise as possible, and color temp adjusted to look like the late afternoon sun.

I mostly use it for product pics and for minor video work here and there, where I need great color rendition over 80CRI LEDs in my home, along with powerful enough lighting if natural lighting isn’t good enough.
I’m not a photographer, nor do I work in the field of video or photos, so it’s mostly as a utility.

You need high CRI for accurate color reproduction of objects in shots. Too little red, and your object, and human skin looks lifeless.

Here are some pics taken the 1st time I’ve used the Q8 as a photography light.
Sorry for the compression artifacts too.

I did not modify the pics in any way.

The 1st pic was done without a diffuser for the BLF Q8. Hard shadows as you can see.

The 2nd pic was done with an 80CRI light source. White seem green, red seem completely flat.

The 3rd pic was done with the BLF Q8 and a diffuser. The white looks so much better and cleaner.

The 4th pic was done with the BLF Q8 and diffuser. Looks great. Close to how it looks during the afternoon.

15

Before LED lights, photographers were using natural light (sun), tungsten lights, flash lights that are all high-CRI lights, so how is it surprising to use high-CRI LEDs flashlights ot panels ?
Did you ever work in a studio using tungsten lights ? Sometimes you can sweat pretty quickly during long sessions and eventually burn your hands badly on lights to reajust it if you are not using leather gloves. Not mentionning that powerful tungsten lights are quite large and heavy. LED lights are more convenient for that matter.
I know a few cave or abandoned urban site explorers who are all using flashlights to photograph large cave or distant subjects.

(Sorry for my bad english, I don’t know all appropriate words but I hope you got the idea).

16

koziy, in order to have as good of light quality as sunlight and to a lesser extent flashes and tungsten/halogen lighting, you cannot use a low cri source. Low CRI makes the colors of the image wrong; usually in a way which is not at all flattering. Think of taking portrait shots under a mercury vapor lamp - you don’t want ugly skin tones, do you? In fact, even among high cri sources, some are too green or the wrong tint for a given purpose and so you have to be quite picky sometimes. To use continuous lighting instead of strobes, of course, requires high output which soda can lights can deliver to an extent. So the difference is instead of a large diffuse light panel like the viltrox stuff I often use, you have a compact source in the form of one or more soda can sized lights which while lacking the power input and continuous heat dissipation required for full output, are perfectly reasonable solutions although requiring a diffuser when appropriate, just like you’d use with a small strobe or suchlike. After all, while each $60 panel might put out 2500lm, one Q8 can do 5000 for a limited time, although admittedly it can’t have its cct adjusted without gel whereas the panels have an easy dial adjustment.

In general the reason for me to use a soda can light is performance. The rot66 219b has got a lot of output of very high quality light, and the sst20 q8 is quite the same except that it’s larger and throwier, with a different sort of light which is also very good. I might use it if I needed more light for macro purposes, for instance. The rot is small enough not to be much of a nuisance to carry around, although not in a pants pocket, but both it and the q8 I will grab if I need it, or keep in a bag the same way I might carry around a water bottle in case I get thirsty. Their ability to light a room in a pinch, or across a field, while having a bunch of battery capacity, and various other things are the reasons in general to keep them around - they don’t have to be carried on my person to be worth owning them.

17

BSM,
I’m still not really sure I “get it.” Maybe as a portable light source for video with the proper diffusers — I guess I am not thinking videography — but using a flashlight for still photography still eludes me. Those photos you posted muddy the water rather than clarify, as well. To me, they all look poorly illuminated and underexposed by at least a half stop. In the last one, the dark red and brown from your desk is reflecting strongly onto the product, shifting the gray color to something totally different than how it looks in real life. Is the Q8 just intended as a budget camera flash until you can afford a real one? I don’t think I’m looking at results that would be better than a proper camera flash would produce, but I can totally get improvising with flashlights because it’s what you have and camera flashes are expensive.

General white balance warmth and the vibrance of individual color channels is usually something that can be adjusted in postprocessing anyway, since individual sensor performance is never reliable, even in when natural sunlight is the only light source. For example, my old Canon 5DII would always oversaturate reds and tint-shift greens to be more yellowish than real life. This was in full sun with no artificial light sources. IMO, using different color gels on a camera flash is a technique to get certain results, but there is a limit to what an artificial light source should be relied upon to do when postprocessing software is so powerful.

Tally-ho,
Like I said, I’m not a professional photographer, so I’ve never “worked in a studio,” but I do know some pro photographers and I’ve seen them using their flashes, but never seen any handheld LED flashlight in their kits, high or low CRI.

spaceminions,
The idea of using “mercury vapor lamps” for portrait photography is a strawman argument. Nobody uses mercury vapor lamps for any kind of photography, but you’ve set up this flimsy, distorted representation of the opposing argument and made as if to defeat it is the same as to prove your intended point. It’s not.

You also say that more continuous lumens is somehow preferable for portrait shooting than flashes. Do you know that people squint their eyes when you shine 5000 lumens at them? If you actually use a flashlight for photography, please let me know. Otherwise, I see nothing in your post that really interests me, sorry.

18

@kozy, yeah I’m not really a good photographer.

This is still a large improvement to what my photos look before l used high CRI lights.

And I mean, I’m using a phone to take my own pictures, so my resources are quite limited.

And the photos are compressed by quite a bit.
The original pics are way better.

I am going to purchase a 2nd tripod when I’ll be making desk/photo light with 5700k and 4000k R9580 LEDs.

19

Interesting that they’re “small enough” for “easy” carry for hiking and trail walking for you. I find them way too cumbersome and heavy for that but glad they work for you!

Really informative posts here!

20

The main feature of, say, the Q8 is that it can squeeze out 5000 lemons on pretty much an extended basis, compared to other lights that either are 1000 or so, or step down in minutes or even seconds if higher.

That’s why you’d carry a Q8.