Hi everyone, BLF lurker of a couple of months here!
I recently got my Sipik SK68 clone (Ultraok ZS-2) in the mail and put a AA into it.
I really enjoy this light and have been super impressed by it, especially for a light I got for a little more than $3.
However, I had it on full flood and put it up really close to my hand (so the beam was concentrated) and looked at the beam on my hand, and I felt my eyes give in a little bit to it. I probably wouldn’t have looked at it for any more than about 5 to 10 seconds. Since then my left eye has felt a bit lazier than usual.
Is this normal? has anyone else had an experience like this? I can’t imagine a light that puts out around 80LM doing this really (maybe even less with a standard AA rather than a 14500), I’ve looked into the sun before and also briefly at a electric welder and even they didn’t give me this reaction.
Hopefully this goes away after a while, it does feel quite weird. Apart from that, I really don’t want to find out my eyes are somewhat allergic to LED flashlights! I’ve really been eyeing an 8 chip Convoy S2+!
Probably the last place you would want to seek medical advice. See a professional, optometry checkups are free under Medicare.
I stared into the sun A LOT when I was a child, nobody told me it was bad. My eyesight is fine now (29yo). It might come back to haunt me later but I’m going to YOLO for now.
Everyone is different, so its hard to tell what you’re experiencing. This is not to be taken lightly or assume that things are fine. aoeu probably offered the best advice to seek an optometrist, especially if the problem persists. LED emissions can permanently destroy photoreceptor in the eyes (especially spikes in certain blue wavelengths), but not enough data has been collected to draw sound conclusions. Most name brand emitters are assigned a risk assessment value in their potential to damage human eyes through repeated long term exposure, but that is only an educated guess without solid evidence. Most emitters that you find in today’s flashlights have the ability to cause permanent eye damage when shined into the eyes. I go to extraordinary lengths to assure that I dont see blue dots burned into my retinas while at play with my lights… but it has happened on several occasions. A small amount of forethought before pressing the clicky goes a long way in preserving your vision. Please let us know how things turn out. I hope this is temporary for you.
The feeling is still there, if it persists tomorrow I’ll book into an optometrist. In foresight I didn’t really consider that looking at the concentrated beam on my hand would do this, especially since I’m not playing with a 1k lumen light, rather a sub 100 sk68. However, I knew very well not to look directly into it though and I’m glad I didn’t.
What does “felt my eye give in” mean? Was it on a power management level and are you prone to seizure activity? You should see your doctor if so. A beam like that reflected off your hand should not damage your vision if you looked at it for a second.
That was probably a bad way of wording it, but the feeling when you’re looking at a light and it’s getting bright that your eye kinda starts to become a bit sensitive. Not exactly like the feeling when you look at the sun and you gotta close your eyes right then and there though., it was more mild.
I haven’t been diagnosed as being seizure prone or epileptic or anything. The light only has a single mode, and that is high (I read it’s about 80 lumens with a AA battery on this particular flashlight)
Yeah, I forgot to mention, I do have an vision condition which definitely mellowed out after time to the point where I stopped wearing my prescription glasses, perhaps the light reintroduced it again. Perhaps it’s time to start wearing the glasses again :zipper_mouth_face:
I’ll consult an optometrist soon and let everyone know how it goes.
my ophthalmologist uses a machine to inspect my retina with a much more intense beam than a sk68 reflected in your hand, and he might be about 2 minutes per eye, twice a year… I don’t think he´s trying to damage my eyes on purpose to have a lifetime patient
so I think the hazard of seeing the reflection in a hand of that weak light for that short time is absolutely safe
Just an update, I went to an optometrist today and told them my situation and they assured me that it’s not possible for the light to have caused any damage to my eyes.
They also looked at my eye health and tested me for different optics (to see if my sight would improve with glasses), and they assured me that my sight was perfectly fine without glasses and that I didn’t need them anymore and that my eye health is perfect.
As totilde mentioned, the optometrist shone a very bright light in my eye to check my eye health, I would assume it was much more intense than my SK68!
Thats a pretty mean sk68 you got that sticks eyelashes in your eye, I hate that feeling!
Oh but not joking: you kept relating this to feelings of “looking into the sun” etc…hope you really dont do that, or look at the beams of LED lights in any case on purpose, especially stronger ones. You wouldn’t typically “feel” visual damage anyways, there are not pain sensors on the retina. You just kill cells and lose vision slowly. And exposure to bright lights does damage the retina after long periods, especially if there is any possibility of more highly energetic wavelengths getting in there. Even intense blue light (which LEDs emit) has been shown to cause eye problems over time. Not trying to get you to think something is “wrong” again, its just not “safe” to be looking into your LED beams because an opthalmologist uses a bright light to look at your retina for a couple minutes, a couple times in your life…
Yeah, I guess he did say optometrist, my mind jumped from shining of bright lights into your eye and getting checked out to the more thorough opthalmologist exam, but he had an optometrist exam, which ironically probably didn’t include thorough checking of his retina and was essentially useless to detect any damage it could have caused, though he didn’t need an exam in the first place for what he thought he did… Result was he probably had even less light in his eye.
Oh well, doesn’t change anything, light was not enough to do anything, looking into more LED lights because they shine a bright light in your eye does not = harmless, retinal eye damage is a dose/response issue you aren’t going to feel anyways, so just avoid it.
Diffuse reflections are generally speaking harmless. Especially if the source of the light is diffuse to begin with, like a light.
Did some tests on random stuff around the house with a 1.5W laser and an LPM a long while back, after an accident where I saw the burning dot of a blue laser ~12 inches from my eye.
The result was that all but obviously shiny materials did not produce any kind of a reading at closer than ~6 inches, and the exposure was under 5mW at even longer distances.
Unfortunately every material is different, and while some are matte to begin with, they can melt and become reflective, so please don't take this post as a reason to be reckless... only two eyes available for life as of this moment.
If you ever have a blind spot that persists for a long time, half hour to an hour, get to an ophthalmologist right away. While nothing can be done to repair your retina, you can be given anti inflammatories to make sure that a burn spot does not damage surrounding tissue from swelling.
