In Star Trek Strange New Worlds season 4 episode two there are three flashlights. They are rather large have a low light output and don’t strobe. It looks like they took some old quartz halogen spotlights and glued some decorations on them. Not that I blame them for using incandescent lights strobing is annoying. In a different series which I also didn’t like the Klingons lit up the entire surface of their ship which was 1000 years old at one billion lumens per square meter. I have a few thoughts on what a futuristic flashlight should look like and what it would be able to do but I am not going to talk about it since HollyWood would steal the idea. No idea what the episode was about I didn’t finish it.
I liked the ones on V’ger which were twin-beam lights strapped to the back of the wrist.
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Lessee if this displays…
Retarded webp, but whatever…
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I immediately thought of V’ger from the first movie and thought to myself, “I don’t remember there being that style of light in the movie” 
Yeah, that’s Neelix in the pic, but apparently he changed his name to Netflix. Whoodathunk?
Iirc they had to run wires under the costume sleeves to power those dual incandescent projector bulbs to make that flashlight prop work. Power was on a hidden belt pack maybe?
Crazy how much has changed in lighting technology in the past 30 years.
If you want to see a really big syfy spotlight look here. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t8LD0iUYv80
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I gotta watch more Dust. That was good. Thanks.
I was trippin’ when I saw that Sofirn included a wrist strap for the SE1. I had to seek out other wrist lights. That neelix pic is what came up.
Yeh, I think I posted that in the “what videos you watching?” thread ages ago. My first encounter with Dust, and I was all “Holy Shiite, that was incredible!” about it.
Yeh, I specifically searched for V’ger, and what mostly came up were the TNG palm lights, like the way I palm headlamps like the HS21.
I saw that new Star Trek episode, and … like almost anyone here, I found myself checking out the flashlights. 
Not sure what they were using, but it seemed weirdly low-tech and weak. I’m guessing the creators wanted the flashlights to be intentionally weak since it was sort of a horror-themed episode, and horror doesn’t work very well when everything is clearly illuminated. Video games often have the same problem with flashlights… the dang things barely work at all.
It’s easier to accept that sort of thing when watching stories set in the past, back when flashlights genuinely weren’t very good. But now, or especially in a future sci-fi show… it really hurts believability. If they have the tech to travel to distant parts of the galaxy, they should have the tech to make a pretty decent flashlight. Even in our primitive society, we’ve got dinky little torches which turn night into day, in a pretty large area… so in the future we should have some pretty kick-ass flashlights.
At the very least, we should be getting about double the efficiency, with twice as much energy in the battery, so twice as much light for twice as long. That may be getting close to the theoretical limits, but it’s probably at least feasible.
Instead, it was like they were using an anemic old bargain-bin incandescent torch from the late 1900s.
For dramatic effect, of course. But still.
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That image of a perfect circle of light with no hotspot was highly manipulated well over a decade ago.
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It’s a meme pic. Meme pics aren’t exactly known for their strict accuracy and nuance.
However, in this case, it’s not really misleading either. Many of us here on the forum have lights which achieve similar brightness. For example, this recent review by SammysHP shows how a single-cell torch can provide bright illumination of a large area:
I chose the meme pic because it’s a meme pic, with the relevant text and comparison images built into a single pic. It’s a compact, convenient, memorable way to make a point. But also, it’s a pretty accurate representation of flashlights in movies vs flashlights in real life. We’ve had cheap torches that bright for over a decade. I think I got my first torch of this performance level in 2013… and that very same torch is displayed in BLF’s site banner.
I used that torch (the gold one) to do a lot of the early development for Anduril. I used it as recently as yesterday, to test some changes. But I’m getting lost in tangents.
Anyway, the beamshot in the meme pic may have a history of being used for deceptive purposes, like to advertise torches which don’t look anything like that… but torches of similar brightness are common. I have like 30 of them on my desk right now. So I don’t think it’s problematic in this context.
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I don’t know what you mean by this, but that’s the typical beam pattern of a flashlight using an aspheric lens (not necessarily a zoomie).
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The original Star Trek had flat displays that did not flicker like a TV screen when you photograph it. I still don’t know how they did that. To quote granny about the new series they are all hat and no cattle.
They were translucent film backlit from behind, ie, static displays. Kinda like a bright Viewmaster.
The exception was Spock’s moire-pattern thingy.
I think the main display was a matte and added in later.
Even in ST:TMP, the main screen was blank. The cast complained that those scenes were the hardest to film that they had to pretend awe in long lingering shots when going through V’ger’s colorful ever-so-active bowels, while just staring at a blank board.
I mean it was photoshopped in many different ways.
Would you see a perfectly round circle from this supposed "camera"point of view when you’re illuminating the ground and the building behind you?
NO.
Would you have a fairly clean cut off between light and dark at those kind of distances?
NO.
And they’re implying that this is a pretty small light that we can’t even see him holding in his hand. Was there anything that small 10 years ago that could light up an area that large from that distance with that many lumens?
NO.
So even as a meme it fails terribly because you need to remember that you are dealing with Hollywood or film and if they want the flashlight used to be about as bright as a cell phone light then that’s how bright it’s going to be. If you want reality in movies and television you’re out of luck.
Let’s not try to compare fake Hollywood to a fake photoshopped image.
And remember when most people need a flashlight they are pulling out their cell phone.
So I don’t know what movie or television show that came from but it might be depicting some form of reality.
It was taken from the same height and direction as the light. So yes, I’d expect it to be a circle.
Absolutely.
Do you know the meaning of exposure time and light sensitivity? Thousands of lumens wasn’t special even 10 years ago, but you don’t need them in this case.
Here is the first photo I could find of a flashlight with aspheric lens in my collection. Currently it’s too bright to recreate the above picture.
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