We’re now reaching a lumen apex of limiting practical applications. What is practical to one is impractical lumen-wise to another.
Would you for instance use a 60,000 lumen fan-cooled Acebeam X70 on turbo mode to light up a typical bedroom closet to search for the best shirt to wear that evening?
Would you use a 60,000 lumen fan-cooled AcebeamX70 on turbo mode to light up the expanse across or below you in the Grand Canyon?
Are we actually experiencing greater amounts of impractical (infrequent) situations where more lumens are practically necessary vs lesser amounts of practical (frequent) situations where less lumens are practically necessary?
Or are we all just essentially looking to be entertained like Star Wars junkies?
Do you see where I’m going with all this?
Neither do I butt I was bored so I threw this BS out there.
Myself personally don’t have a need for a water cooled 60,000 lumen monster. Sure it would be cool to have. I would just use it as a, impress your friends and family type thing with it, and to possibly aggravate my neighbors up the road. Around the house I rarely find a need for more than 100 lumens or so. I would say a third of my lights are 500 lumens or less. Another third of them are between 500 and 1000 lumen and the final third will reach out to 1000 to 6000 and only one light reaches the 6000 mark. When I first purchased the Q8 I really had no need for it, it was more of a show off thing. Over the time of having it I have found more and more useful things to use it for. The long run time on lower modes is really nice when used with a lantern topper at 100 lumens on the deck at night or needing some extra light for picture taking without having to use the awful flash on the camera.
So I guess I am experiencing greater amounts of impractical situations where more lumens are required. When I show off new lights everyone is expecting the next one to be bigger and brighter but I don’t use them for practical situations where a $15 dollar 500 lumen AA light will suit most of my needs.
In the flat that I rent lightning is in general insufficient and there’s little I am willing to do about it. I frequently take 10-20 klum and point at the ceiling (which is actually brown and absorbs a lot of that). And I’m disappointed when they step down.
Ok. So somewhat watt you’re saying I believe is that we now have more solutions looking for more problems. And as “luck” would have it we actually are turning once seemingly impractical solutions (these uber bigly lumen out putters) into practical problem solvers.
Or are we finding more problems now simply becuz we’re looking for ever more solutions?
It appears to be a viscious never ending cycle which I’m sure the flash manufacturers are all very aware of as we increase their bank accounts. :money_mouth_face:
A 60K lumen flashlight would just be a toy for me, for the wow factor. I am nervous of any very powerful multi- battery flashlight and only use them for a laugh or to impress people
My go to flashlights for around the house are an HDS Rotary and a Malkoff MD2 which I have had for years and which always work. In my pocket I usually have a AAA flashlight of some description and very recently a Lumintop Geek on my keys.
My go to light for walking the dog will be whatever is new, or my Nitecore SRT6.
I remember getting a Surefire 6P with 60 lumens and going ‘Wow!!!’ Then I got my first drop in……
Anything more powerful than around 1000 lumens is in my collection because of the wow factor.
Ahhhhhhhh. Here we go. So CRI when over 20,000 lumens is KEY to where this solution (i.e., an Acebeam X70) now suddenly becomes actually truly practical.
Maybe LED manufacturers should now take note?
Or X70 type flash manufacturers should purposefully start adding more CRI 90+ LEDS into their emitter array mix even at the expense of losing overall lumens so that at least some accurate down range color comes back when turbo is on?
Would that even work if let’s say you mixed 3 x CRI 90+ emitters and 4 x CRI 70 emitters into the same array?
CRI isn’t a requirement for seeing things… Beam control however is key because if you are blinded by 20,000 lumens hitting the ground at your feet you aren’t going to be able to see much down range.
I agree but which would blind you less, the CRI 70 or the CRI 90+?
Or does it make a practical difference at all at these lumen levels?
Or how about instead of so many more modes to choose from on an X70 type flash you gave a mode selection that ONLY activates the CRI 90+ emitters on their respective turbo mode for sake of more accurate color illumination?
Personally I’m finding that more accurate color quality is becoming more practical as lumens increase.
Blinding has more to do with the colour temperature.
For example, many modern cars have very cool white headlights, which of course are also a lot brighter than good old warm white 100 CRI halogen tungsten bulbs…
In addition to that, they often have rather small optics, so it all comes from a tiny spot.
Now THAT’s blinding, compared to older cars.
But i digress in a headlight rant…
(I just think it’s STOOPID to fit vehicles with tiny cool white intense lights)
But as we all ought to know, it’s the blue range of the spectrum that scatters inside our eyes, causing a blinding effect.
Not just in our eyes, also in fog and smoke etc…
Cool LEDs have a LOT of blue in their spectrum, so they blind.
As for CRI, the higher the better everything looks, and real colours help distinguish objects in detail, so high CRI helps vision too, to an extend.
I think for the best vision you want 4000 - 5000 K high CRI with the natural amount of red in it.
Maybe a bit warmer for vehicles, because warmer provides better contrast perception (hence yellow and orange driving glasses, but those also block the blue).
A lot sense here as you note. The practicality of higher CRI’s as lumens and IMO especially as throw increases comes from the personal real life observation that the further the object is in question the more my eyes rely upon accurately identifying what it is I’m exactly looking at. Accurate color quality then becomes not just a luxury but a practicality.
Most of us are inclined to conform (to belong to a certain group) or to excell (to rise above that group).
Or in more poetic terms, to stick to what you’ve got or to boldly go where no man has gone before.
Live the simple life for happy ever after, but when your neighbour buys a Nimbus 2000, you want one too.
And when you have some real ambition, you build your own Nimbus, and call it a 2001, or 3000.
As long as it is possible to do something faster, higher, or better, it will be done. That was the excell part.
Some of us grow gray hairs pretty young, others will never have gray hair. Or make us believe so (Trump).
That’s the point where you say, was that really necessary, to buy/build yourself a light with 60,000 lumens?
So you wanna come up with an excuse to your parents, your partners, your peers and your LEO’s.
Here it is: if the color is right (high CRI) the market for more lumens is limitless. Poppycock.
Just admit it: somewhere in your (and mine) brain are some cell’s that have not yet evolved beyond the fase:
he(she) who own the biggest club, sword, bow, musket, bike, car, rocket or flashlight
wil win him/her-self the most furtile mate to procreate.
To summarize the above: a bigger flashlight is better for your personal gene-pool. So buy/build one!
This is indeed primal. Or better yet primal competitiveness. Or perhaps even primal procreative competitiveness. Kinda like if a primate rubs two big flashes together does he fashion he’ll get a bigger more useful fire? He doesn’t care as long as SHE notices, right?
This makes absolutely no sense. Butt it tickled a couple of primal cells in my brain to say it. :student:
That is what eventually turned me off my DX80 before selling it. Lots of lumens washing out just about everything. I have much more joy with the beam profile of my L6.
Henk4U2 I like how you related the lumens arm race to evolutionary psychology.
Besides the desire to be part of an in group and/or to attract a mate I think there could be an even larger primal drive towards more powerful lights.
Fear of the dark. For very practical reasons being afraid of the dark has been a good thing for millions of years. The dark masks dangers. Having a healthly fear has helped humans not get eaten or trip over a rock and die.
Virtually all children go through a period of development where they fear monsters in the dark (I have no empirical data to support that statement. I’m assuming it’s true).
If you are a human light means safety/security.
I’m not trying to say that all of us on this forum are afraid of the dark (I’m in my 40s now and I haven’t been afraid of the dark for at least 20 years ). I’m suggesting our current psyche was/is formed around fear of the dark. That in part might be why we get a smile on our face (or even giggle) when we extinguish darkness with a high power light.
You are making me feel like I need to get an L6. Been on my list for awhile but I always convince myself it’s too big and I don’t need it. But if it brings you more joy than a DX80 that is a pretty solid endorsement. Hmm.
