Flashlights

I'm already considering my next light. Like shave gear, this can be an addiction as folks come up with new and different ways to add lumens out the front. There is currently a new light with 4 leds. It's a one 18650 cell light, maybe 4" long in the longest configuration. It'll take a shorter cell for a shorter light. The output is a completely insane 3500 lumens and it draws 15 amps from the cell to do that. Runtime at full output is possibly 15 minutes. Of course such a small light also produces an insane amount of heat and because of such little mass it has no where to go. But the light will transmit the "thermal regulation" to ones hand, that would be a message to turn the light down as the order of burning human flesh hits the nose. Not every Li-Ion cell made will be capable of driving this light to it's full capability.

It's the D4 ($40) but right now it's presently sold out, more to arrive soon.

Edit: Sorry, I got called away.

Actually I have 6 lights in the queue. 3 Q8s, 2 for us and one as a gift to a brother with cells and charger; a Giga Thrower that will project a beam for 2km and for which I have no foreseeable use but it's too unique and low priced (for what it is) to pass up, and 2 custom lights that should I get the D4 I'll cancel. All but the D4 are BLF produced lights with international input in the designs. Then that's it. I need to stop buying lights. I have more than an excellent selection.

Whoops, I forgot I have a 2nd Manker mk41 cool white HD coming in because I like it's versatility in being able to use ANY AA size cell, from 14500s to (only in a dire emergency) alkaline AAs from the supermarket. Nice light with decent output (2000 lumens) and runtime using the Eneloop Pro AA cells that I favor in this light. It also has a decently simple user interface, and it's pocketable in a jacket pocket. The build quality is good, typical of a Manker light.

Got the Manker MK41 in NW HD as suggested by ShadowsDad.

It's an amazingly well built light. I especially like the flexibility in using both 'regular' AA batteries (NiMH Eneloops for me + all the normal 'Primary' non-rechargeable Lithium/Alkaline batteries in an emergency) + 14500 if I decide to 'upgrade'.

I'm using it for normal camping and/or emergency situations so I didn't need anything super exotic. I find the 'moonlight' mode is more than enough for walking around and getting general things done while the higher modes are nice for the 'wow' factor or if the extra brightness is needed.

I'm also using the light with a flash diffuser for some macro photography and it works amazing for that too. Glad I got the 'Neutral White' vs the brighter 'Cool White'.

ShadowsDad correct me if I'm mistaking, but the ~1500 lumens in turbo mode is certainly brighter than the ~600 lumens in Hi mode.... but it doesn't seem to be DOUBLE the brightness? There seems to be a diminishing returns after a certain point?

Thanks again for all the advice and expertise!

Spencer, you're absolutely correct about that phenomenon. While instruments can directly measure the lumens and measure it, the human eye requires much more difference to detect it. It chews up far more juice to do it too. It might be more noticeable when using it at distance. I find that it easily "throws" light out to and past 100 yards but that's the limit of what I normally need. The most efficient mode is moonlight, but as you increase the lumens the juice consumed to produce the light becomes far less efficiently used. That's a characteristic of LEDs, but filament lights were capable of just a small fraction of what todays LED lights can do as light emitters. Turbo mode uses a huge amount of juice to produce light that the human eye has difficulty discerning from High mode. That's why I suggested that you would never miss not having Li-Ion cells to power it. Sure it's brighter with them, but you really miss nothing by not having them. But you'd give up huge runtimes with the Li-Ions that store much less juice per cell.

In Turbo you can also feel the light getting noticeably warm. It takes a large amount of current to produce that light. Some lights will get warm in (literally) a minute and too hot to hold in a bit more*. But they are what I call dragster lights. Others call them hotrod lights. Mostly only light enthusiasts encounter those lights. But you have the beginnings of the slippery slope in your possession. It's not normally encountered for a NiMH powered light to warm up as much as the MK41 does. Phil also got one with his C8. Hardware store lights I know nothing about, only enthusiast lights. When asked I try to steer folks to lights they can use without danger. If you want to go deeper you need to know more for safety, but that's up to you to do that. It's not difficult but it's up to you. What you both have is safe.

If you enter engineering mode you can adjust the moonlight mode to decrease or increase the lumens. The UI is fairly easy to use in the mk41. If you run into problems programming it get back to me, but the manual that came with the light is pretty good. If I remember correctly my moonlight mode is set to level 8 or 10. I use it for moving around the house and dodging the dogs at night without putting lights on.

* The Noctigon M43 Meteor, a 4 18650 cell light that I've been using lately has very little mass to absorb the heat produced and it produces 7500 (?- an insane amount of light) lumens of flood light. I have no idea how many amps it takes to do that but I suspect that it's 20 or more based on the rudimentary understanding that I have. It will drain cells very rapidly. It gets very hot very fast and is specially built to pass that heat onto the body of the light, what little body there is, and the hand holding the light. But still, turbo is a momentary thing. But if not momentary It has special temp' step down circuitry to prevent the light from destroying itself. You simply would not believe the small size of this light and the absolutely insane amount of light it can produce. It's like having a photographic flash going off continually, but no blinking. It just goes on and on. It can't be looked at.

Yet another use for LED flashlights... Though a very specialized type... A UV light.

A year or so ago I got a hair across my butt and decided to buy a UV flashlight (Convoy S2+). I don't remember how I justified it, maybe it was just a "I want one" sort of thing, you know, to be different. Anyway it came in and it was time to look at the world as a bee sees it. I'm not going to go into that so much. This post is actually about using it in the garden.

One of the things I did when I got it was to take it outside at night and see what can be seen. That year we were having our first infestation of tomato hornworms. Now anyone who has them knows how difficult they can be to spot until they get to be quite large and the tomato plant has already been devastated. UV light at night completely changes the playing field. No longer are the worms and the plant the same color. At night the plant is mostly dark, and the worms fluoresce brightly. There is no hiding from the UV light for the worms!

On 3 plants that we have on the deck, yesterday I noticed that we had them again and I got 1/2 a dozen during the daylight and thought I had gotten most of them. Last night I went out with the light and (I just counted the bodies) got 17 more. I'll check again tonight because as easy as they are to spot when using the light they can hide behind the dense foliage.

Edit: I checked the plants a few times tonight and only got one hornworm. The wife had never seen how they fluoresce so I had to show her. Good thing one was left for the demo'.

I have an Emisar D4 coming in. Mine is a 4000 lumen version that is 3 3/4" long, but they can be as short as 2 1/2". That's a lot of light output from such a small flashlight; it's a game changer similar to what the Noctogin M43 Meteor did for lights. It's a hair large in diameter (IMO) for a pocket light, but will easily fit in a coat pocket. Since there's no mass to soak up the heat it can only run at that output for a short time. Why didn't I get the short tube version? Easy, I didn't want to buy special cells and I didn't want to sacrifice runtime. What I bought will use what I have on hand, 18650 cells. Of course it will also operate at much lower output. I believe it uses a version of the Narsil user interface (UI) which is supposed to be very nice, this will be my first light that uses it. It's suggested that the UI be used to lock out the switch for pocket carry since it will get very hot very rapidly if inadvertently switched on. Mine will get my favored finger lanyard as soon as I get it, the same as all of my small lights wear. I has a flood type beam and will light up an entire field (so that it doesn't need to be swept with a narrow beam) and easily reach out to 100 yards (the farthest I can use a light in my backyard).

To put it into perspective, If 300 lumens is blinding to look at, you can imagine how bright 4000 lumens is.


Just a refresher... the UI is the way the operator controls the light from the click switch. Each light has a chip in it, basically a dedicated computer, that controls the light. The UI is the control program and Narsil is state of the art in UIs at this time.

I think I've written this before; these are not the lights of our childhood. It's also a very poor choice for a child.

As far as I know it's only available in the USA from here: http://www.mtnelectronics.com/index.php?...uct_id=855
That site also shows the UI in chart form and has brief spec's.

It can probably be ordered directly from China.

I received the Emisar D4 today. I am so glad that I got the LED that I did, Cree XP-L HI V3 1A, as it puts out more light with less heat. Even so the head of this very small light gets distinctly hot in 12 seconds. It also cools down rapidly. But it's putting out over 4k lumens and the heat produced by the required current has to go somewhere- nothing is free- it's conducted to the heat sink, the light body and the hand. The beam is flood and did I mention how tiny it is? It would make an excellent tactical light. I'm also glad that I got the longer tube version since this light has the potential to drain a cell in a very short time and the bigger cell gives more juice (It's still a tiny light).

The user interface (UI) v2.0 is the best I've ever used. Unless someone wants to access the higher functions, easily 5 minutes of playing with it will educate one as to how to use it.

Criticisms: no lanyard hole, and no hat or pocket clip, and that's all I can think of. Max' output for just a few seconds with hand comfort, but it's a hotrod light and that goes with the territory. It's expensive, but it's also charting new ground.

Pro: Extreme performance, VERY(!) small. It's capable of being even smaller if one desires that. A fantastic UI.

Now I wait for full darkness. This light should easily reach out to the 100 yard line. "Easily" means that it will do far more but it's as far as I can see at home. Just fantastic performance from such a tiny light. It's less than 3 3/4" long and the head is 1 1/16" in diameter.

To get such performance though the cell needs to be a high drain cell. I have a Samsung 30Q in it.

OK, performance in the dark. Since I live in rural Maine there is only the minor light pollution from small towns, the closest being 10+ miles away.

While there are small lights that are brighter at distance they achieve that by narrowing up the beam and concentrating the light. This light doesn't do that. It has a flood beam. So looking in the back yard it lights up a wide swath of the field and still easily reaches out to 100 yards. There is no scanning required as with a tighter beam. By technical standards a light "throws" to a certain distance by being as bright as the full moon at whatever yardage. This is much brighter than that at 100 yards. I already mentioned how rapidly it gets hot. That's the price to be paid for such performance in such a small light. But it can be backed down for long term output that can be held onto.

The UI has a slight flicker when one transitions from more efficient regulated output and into the less efficient over driving of the LEDs. Immediately let off on the button when the flicker is noticed, or back it up a bit and that's as efficient as the light can run and it won't over heat for the remaining charge in the cell. It's still quite bright at that output level and one still has max' output available with a click, and can return to the efficient level with another click. The UI is well thought out.

John, Q8 PM purchase notifications will be sent out in a bit. Rumor has it on the 7th.

Thanks, Brian.

My pleasure. It's been interesting to follow the making of this light for the past 1.5 years that it's been in development. Now that it's coming down to ordering the excitement is building.

It's already listed for pre-orders on the Banggood site. Relax, we get ours first. After that, commercial sales, unless the manufacturer is cranking out thousands of them, and it appears to be doing just that. The BLF members alone have ordered 1500ish of them, but obviously not for the retail price.

If you cursor down in the link the description and specs are pretty close to reality, BLF members made sure of that. Check out the runtimes. Runtime is obviously dependent on the cells used though. FWIW, the lumens are conservative. Expect 6k+ lumens if you use the suggested high drain cells. It'll be plenty bright when that's needed and it'll also get hot fairly fast.
https://www.banggood.com/BLF-Q8-4x-XP-L-...mds=search