What's your definition of a "thrower"?

Came here to say something similar, * obviously * i javelin throw all my lights and the ones that travel furthest are throwers :smiley:

Sure… It looks nice for reflector light, at least on your pic. But I did not actually thought about useful spill that comes from reflector as reflector “halo effect”.

I actually thought about ability to have real adjustable full flood to throw light withot any halo effect that could mess up my “night vision adaptation” and that happens with reflector lights they simply mess up my night vision and that why I prefer aspheric lights.

Aspheric zoom type of a beam has sharp borders, so there is better contrast between illuminated area and dark area. The enhanced contrast lets us to perceive things brighter and better.
When we turn on reflector LED light, our night vision is killed by “useful spill” that is reflecting from nearby objects like grass, ground, rocks, water(sea, rivers).
Pupil of the eye narrows and we see less. The brighter the environment is, the narrower is the pupil of the eye, so there’s a reduction in light that hits the fundus and we see less than we would see without useful spill.

Is it important what we can see in a night? Yes sure… With aspheric zoomie type of light beam enhanced contrast happens and we can see further in a night, and with zoom out function we can adopt flood for desired close up situations. Try to find something beneath your foot or couple meters away with your 600 kcd reflector thrower :slight_smile:

^

Ok.

I don’t get your last sentence. I can see fine 3 ft,8 ft ,20 ft and 50 ft ahead of me. The center beam is a hundred yards down the trail. The peripheral light/spill is right in front of me I can see fine.

Off to my hike, Two humans and two dogs using the throwers to see perfectly! Have a good night

Sure. Reflector is still the most popular format for flashlight… For night vision devices for example the best and most used format is aspheric zoomie, and one day with something like laser VCSEL, LEP or something else will led to unbeatable flashlight format that will work with single battery source, ultra long runtimes, excellent throw and flood and I presume (I would bet on that) that mentioned format of super distant future lights will be some kind of zoomie light.

I think his point is that powerful reflector throwers may have both spill and a blindingly bright hotspot.

  • Try looking for something inside your closet with your 1 megacandela thrower and it might be all you see is a blindingly bright hotspot. Or if you turn the light to low power, you’ll see fine, but your field of view is so narrow due to the tight hotspot that it’s like looking through a paper towel tube.
  • At very long range, the amount of light from the spill on objects in the foreground is vastly greater than the tiny amount reflected off the target off in the distance. This spill may wash out your night vision and make it harder to see into the distance. This is why aspheric throwers tend to work well for colossal throw. There’s no spill to hit objects in the foreground and wash out your vision.

That’s not to say reflector throwers don’t have their place of course. For bike riding you may find one that gives good spill up close and decent vision 100’ off in the distance. But at the same time that wouldn’t be an ideal light for finding something under your bed (hotspot is too narrow and bright), or looking at something 1 km away (spill on foreground objects may wash out light reflected off very distant target).

I just got a Fresnel sheet so any high output light can be a thrower. Needs 2 hands though.

There are a lot of variables here. In addition it comes down to preference.

Some people like flood others like throw. I have no use for flood lights, except for edc’s.

I know I’m not alone, it’s much more impressive to see a beam of light go hundreds of yards, a mile instead of a wall of light.

The variables are the size of the light, the reflector size and shape, the LED. You have pencil beams like XPG2 ect., the black flat family Etc. Then you have the CFT90, SBT90.2 which is 5000 lumens and up over a million CD depending on the light. They have absolutely plenty, plenty of spill. Is it a traditional walking your dog light? No. But I’m not traditional.

Again it’s all preference. I prefer a light that has as much lumens and as much throw as possible.

The Zoomies and aspheric lights do nothing for me. They don’t have enough output. I had one. A popular one I can’t recall the name of it or the brand. It was like 450Kcd but not a great light to walk with your girlfriend or your dog and she’s not a dog!

There’s probably dozens and dozens of people on here who know much much more about the electronics of flashlights and how the light beam works. And they can explain all they want and back it up with this and that. But all that matters to me is what I like and what I enjoy. I’m a little unorthodox but that’s okay.

One last thing about flooders. I had a few of them several years ago and returned them to be V54. Nothing wrong mechanically with the light. I was just so disappointed because after a hundred fifty two hundred yards you couldn’t see anything you couldn’t identify anything. That’s what I’m used to and that’s what I like.

That’s the end of my story have a good weekend.

The most unique thrower I have is the Firefoxes FF5 HID in 4300K. Massive soft beam that seems to go on forever with none of the overheating of LED

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I agree :wink:
The most versatile light I use are zoomies and are my emergency lights.
Seems like Throwers are my favorite toys and most used.