Sometimes it would be interesting to know what a light looks like from 2200 meters and about 5 km away, for example if you were in the Valley bottom and a helicopter appears in the sky looking for you. This webcam is located on top of Sulphur Mtn., and is about 800 meters vertical above the valley bottom. This day shot shows the general landscape and the area where the lights will be in the dark:
How the lights were anchored and aimed:
This is what it looks like from the top of Sulphur Mountain when darkness falls with no lights active at my staging area:
The rest of the shots have the dark area cropped out, and the captions are self explanatory. There is no Brand Agenda with regards to what appears here, the lights just consist of the lights that are presently on hand.
Edit: Added shot with EA4 using LiFePO4 cells, on the ground it seems somewhat brighter, here it’s hard to say:
And last, halfway down from the summit of Sulphur, isothermal avalanche debris as a result of recent warm weather. SX5 is throwing the beam onto the last seen point, while an SD6 with flood lens is clipped onto the searchers leg. Here you can see the tint differential between the SX5 and SD6, while both are NW, the SD6 is cooler, and causes more reflection from the falling snow flakes.
Conclusion: The higher white tints are more visible from altitude. However almost any light is visible in the dark, even the Sparks on flood. Unlike the examples here that are surrounded by other urban light sources, if you were in total darkness an air search would find you when you were using almost any light.
Thanks TSellers. That certainly is a different test of flashlight. I wonder how they would perform at the base of the mountain range in the background?
Thanks! What I find fascinating is that from 2200 meters we’re seeing only 1/242 lux from the light making the brightest spot, the Nitecore EA4, which is 20,000cd according to Nitecore.
Thanks for the comments, sound like potential for some more interesting experiments with this free webcam. We are probably the first group of eccentric individuals that ever became interested in looking at this cam at night.
I had that same thought, the old airfield at the base of Cascade Mtn is one good area, there is also some potential from the access road leading to Lake Minnewanka way at the back of the pic for Scaru’s thrower. In fact if you go to their website you’ll see there is another camera facing west at the back of the mountain (fogged in at he moment right now) but it also lends more location options as two roads transition the area covered by that camera and the only lights visible at night on that cam are the Sunshine interchange. In that west facing cam you can see where the roads wrap to the right in the center of the picture around the ridge, at that point it is probably around 13 road km’s from the base of the mountain. I’d need to enlist the help of my spouse as it’s a two person job. Someone needs to go to the computer and when the light is aimed at the cam, bring the webcam shot up, and then capture it when it refreshes every 5 minutes. I’ve been using Snagit to capture the images, and it is prone to crash at times. But there is cell phone coverage in all those areas so it would be possible to co-ordinate something with someone at the computer. Maybe when I get my hands on something that is a better thrower I can give it a shot.
Speaking of that very subject, perhaps someone can help. I have an old 4D maglite that escaped binning laying around. I wasn’t interested in getting too committed to an involved MOD on it, but then I noticed this single mode drop-in from Fasttech that looks like it might work for that light. It appears that perhaps the only modding would be insulating the existing spring loaded receiver for the incandescent bulb so it does not short the positive spring on the drop in. It is Fasttech SKU 1094900 if anyone would care to give an opinion as to the feasibility of using this. I’d probably grab some of the Feilong 5000mAH LiFePO4 cells to power it as it looks like the drop in could easily handle the 12.8 volts and they’d provide enough vf to get full output from the 3 XM-L LED’s?
I was thinking that perhaps it is safe to assume that the amount of flood from the lens and the tint are the two most determining factors. On the ground for example, the Spark’s do a significantly better job than the PT Apex, so I was surprised to see it outshine them so well in these tests. As Scaru mentioned, would be interesting to test some throwers with different beam angles from the maximum distance.
On the subject of that Nitecore, as I was driving it with approx 5.6v from the NiMh cells, what if I were to use a couple of LiFePO4’s for 7.2 when at full charge. In a post at CPF they say this light can use lithium primaries. As they can be 1.83v when new, it would seem 7.2v, or 2*LiFePO4 cells would be safe, I wonder if 2 Li-Ion 14500’s at 8.4 would also be OK, the problem being you’d probably never shoehorn the protected ones into the light anyway.
Not sure how much more output you could get from the EA4 or what batteries would fit. But with a TN31 you would get about 1/40 lux at 2200 meters so assuming the aiming is right, it should look MUCH brighter.
Me too, when I can get one eventually I’ll be sure to give it a try, perhaps from as far away as possible. I don’t think that camera is going away in the near future.
@luvlites, may be a moot point, but 2200 meters is the elevation above sea level of that camera, it’s about 800 meters above the valley bottom. However as the crow flies, that camera could conceivably be in the ballpark of 2200 meters away from the light source anyway. How do you come up with those lux estimates anyway?
Thanks for that. As it turns out then in this case 2200 would be a decent ballpark figure anyway, it’s probably not more than 3000 max, guess I’d need to get the rangefinder from work when I get a chance and see what I can get, or maybe I can do it on Google Earth.
Anyway to satisfy my own curiosity tonight I’ll probably try that EA4 again with LiFePO4 cells at 7.4v to see if there is any noticeable difference.
Edit: Did the test as planned, does not appear to make a difference from the air, seems somewhat brighter on the ground using 2 LiFePO4 cells.
BTW, some of our wonderful Texas legislators are cooking up a law that would outlaw any aerial photography unless you have written permission from anybody or the owner of any land that appears in the photos. What’s their definition of aerial photography you ask? Anything taken from over 6 feet off the ground. Sweeeet…
When I went back out after maybe 30 minutes had elapsed since doing that shot to retrieve the EA4 from the stand, it was real dim. I took the 2 LiFePO4 cells out and one of them did not even register any voltage, while the other was at 3.2v. So that is the second Coolook LiFePO4 cell that has completely dropped dead on me in the same number of weeks. Although when I tested them last week against the Sohsine cells and the Coolook seemed to last about 15% longer, I may rethink which brand is the better to buy unless I’ve done something to kill them. Guess I’ll just have to monitor their usage carefully to make sure it’s not something I’m doing wrong.
Interesting perspective thanks for taking the time and trouble to present the information here TS
Nitecore EA4 photo looks good, quite bright for such a distance.
Note - slightly off topic
Bought some Coolooks AAA myself capacity they were way short of minimum stated on wrapper something like 160-70mah (min 200) used Accucell 6 charger to test.
relegated to draw they were cheap i am not going to complain less than $3 from memory
I would say AW cells or perhaps Efest perhaps maybe better cells.
