It will be more like 60 degrees down from the horizon.
See this is the type of stuff that would have been useful at the very beginning. And if you had said that this was primarily going to be used for finding wounded deer mostly after all the leaves are down from the trees we would have realized why you wanted a flood of light and you don’t really need to see beyond a hundred and something meters. So it’s not really about rescue. However in some locations maybe other than where you hunt a farther throwing flashlight may be very useful for hunters. You may not have much experience with flashlights with greater throw but for somebody trying to do this in much more open areas, flashlights with more throw would be very useful at lesser angles whether you like it or believe it or not. So you can be snarky all you want but you are still experimenting and you don’t really know what’s going to work and what isn’t.
No this WONT be used primarily for finding wounded deer. For that task I will use the thermal imaging camera and its not to search for WOUNDED deer but rather Dead deer (carcass).
The lighting option will be used for (as Ive stated many times) for Search and rescue of humans.
Your current theory is that it will be used for search and rescue .You’ve got a lot more testing to do before it’s going to ever be deployed to search for humans. Typically the police would be heading up any operations. Firefighters may be called into help but to deploy a drone you would need to have a proven product and a lot of paperwork and guidelines put into place. Good luck, but you’re a long ways from search and rescue. When the leaves are on the trees this will be mostly useless unless the woods are very thin. More open areas, sure. But that’s where the greater throw comes in as you’ll see as you further experiment.
Which is why this drone (which comes with Flir Boson Thermal imaging cam) will be used more than the light but the dual cameras on this drone (8K color video and Flir thermal cam) means the color video cam will be useless at night.
My goal is to make use of both cameras at night. Currently that option does not exist.
This is one of the already available lighting options that is very very weak. This video switches between the color cam with a crappy light and the thermal camera on this drone. This drone pilot had his color pallet set to the warms things looking black where my eye works better when the warm things are white.
In this video I made I switch between thermal cam and color cam but this video was taken during the day. Im designing a night time option since the termal cam doesnt care if its day or night…
The thermal dron can be better used to find the subject. The light however is better suited to guide rescuers to that location by casting a beam and then the color camera can record the events. The thermal can can and will record the events at the same time but having a color cam option and enough lighting will be a bonus.
This crew opted for an off the shelf Streamlight meant to be mounted on a firearm as well as a 3D printed saddle. Their invention gives them 7 lumens per gram of weight. Im shooting for 10 to 15 lumens per gram of weight.
They are experimenting with 2 lights or one light and a green laser. Im not interested in the green laser
cool… I never would have thought about a handgun pic rail mount solution. There are some lumens/gram benefits that way for sure. Those things have really small optics for relatively near field lighting. Mount up two of them, or get one with an integrated green laser. Stock up on CR123 primaries though. If the department issues cells and the officers are already familiar with this light that’s a win win.
can you mod the drone and attach pic rails directly to it?… you wouldn’t even need the light cradle.
I think instead of your lumens/gram of weight standard you probably need to calculate a threshold for lumens @ 150’ per gram of weight. Then you can probably narrow it down further (because a 4,000 lumen mule is not going to be as useful for your purposes as something less bright but throwier.)
As you’ve found out, all of the small lights need to step down. Your best bet is to look at the ones with thermal stepdowns, and I think you’re just going to have to try a few of them to see if they give you acceptable performance because I don’t think you’re going to be able to find valid data for how they perform with the level of cooling your drone can provide. It may actually be worth it to test some of the hotrods like an Emisar D4V2 with XPL-Hi LEDs. They have huge output, but when handheld they step down really quickly because they get hot fast. Depending on the cooling you get from airspeed and rotor wash though they might be able to hold a much higher output for a while. I know on a cool night my custom D4V2 (~3,900 lumens/ 45,000 cd) will hold turbo for a long time when held out the sunroof going down the road at 45 mph.
Yes, I can 3D print any manner of mounting I desire.
Yes is the mystery at this point. Im waitnig for lights to arrive in the mail but even when they do, its so blasted cold here at night (sub zero temps) I cant fly the drone.
yes, distance is an important variable, that is not taken into account by the Lumens specs.
two lights with different beam shapes can use the same lumens to produce completely different Lux values.
The D4 has 4 leds and produces a floody beam, it consumes more power to light a wider area, than a single LED light, with a tighter focused beam. A D4 can look “dimmer” on target, than a single LED that produces less lumens, drains the battery more slowly, and puts more LUX on target.
terminology:
That is great info I did not know. Thanks for that.
mmmmm - katya!!
glad if it helps
when looking up light lumens and weight specs, I suggest you also consider the Candela spec, which is a measure of the intensity of the throw of a light.
like this:
notice that though the EC11 has double the lumens per gram
the EC11 has less than half as much total Candela output
and, EC11 does not have more throw (candela) per gram
I believe the difference is because the Streamlight has a TiR lens that focuses all the light forward into a hotspot with no spill. Whereas the EC11 uses a conventional reflector with hotspot and spill. The spill is consuming lumens and is not increasing the candela thrown downrange.
A focused TiR lens has a throw advantage over a reflector. I have not searched for TiR lights to suggest, but I think that is where you might have the best gains in Candela, to compete with the Streamlight.
the battery data makes a difference in the per gram calculations…
the Streamlight uses 2x cr123(34gm), while the Nitecore uses 1x 18350 (25gm).
I look forward to your successful re-search 
More great info. Thanks again. If it ever warms up here so that I can fly at night, I will get to explore how various lights work at 100 to 150 feet in the air. Right now, its not safe or comfortable to fly.
if you are using a camera, shouldn;t you match the pattern to the camera view?
ie, telephoto lens should use narrow hot spot, or the light outside camera range is wasted
this is directly related to ‘candela’ -
and lumens
also, would cone reflectors be lighter than TIR?