CANDLE POWER-LUMENS ???
- Thread starter boz
- Start date
Help Support Candle Power Flashlight Forum
rmteo
Flashlight Enthusiast
There is no mathematical conversion. Lumens is a measure of output while C/P (and candela, lux) is a measure of intensity (or brightness) - two different things entirely.
Dude Dudeson
Enlightened
Without special equipment about the best you can do is a ceiling bounce comparison to another source with a known lumen rating.
Moonshadow
Enlightened
The nearest modern equivalent is the Candela . According to the source here a 100 Watt lightbulb (somewhere between 600 and 1000 lumens) is about 120 cd.
Clearly, the million-candlepower thing is a load of nonsense. They would have to be really small candles !
Clearly, the million-candlepower thing is a load of nonsense. They would have to be really small candles !
Josey
Flashlight Enthusiast
deleted
Last edited:
Packet-Storm
Newly Enlightened
- Joined
- Oct 8, 2008
- Messages
- 46
Just let us know what model of light it is. Someone will tell you how it sucks in comparison to LED's (there is always "that guy"). :shakehead
Josey
Flashlight Enthusiast
deleted
Last edited:
MrGman
Flashlight Enthusiast
- Joined
- Feb 6, 2007
- Messages
- 1,777
John you didn't say "how" it sucks in comparison to a LED. The answer is it sucketh badly. Very badly.
The only true answer to the original question ("I have a one million C/P hunting lamp and would like to know what it is in lumens.") is not enough and pathetically dim at that.
When I compared my 1 Million candle power spotlight to various LED spotlights of roughly equivalent beam pattern a long time ago on a garage door far far away, it was sadly equivalent to about a 90 lumen LED light source. Any of my 200 lumen pocket rockets with a fairly tight beam pattern made it look like the sick and pathetic gimpy yellow beam that it was. I gave it away. I told it to never return. It cried and begged to stay in the garage on a charger but I said no. You are not worthy of outlet space, never show your beam in my garage again, and thus it was gone forever. And there was great rejoicing of all the phosphor coatings and lithium batteries throughout the house.
Here is the secret math conversion formula:
Take 1 million candle power, divide by 100,000, that equals 10 as in ($$) that's what those lights are worth in reality, Add $90.00 and that will buy a Dereelight DBS V3 R2 that will make the night shine. That would be a good starting point.
[/QUOTE]
Last edited:
Thanks for all the replies so far, keep them coming. The main reason I joined this forum is due to my job. As an agricultural pest controller I use lamps and guns most nights of the week. I am fed up with the huge cumbersome lamps I have to use and need to keep up to date with new technology. I use a Lightforce Blitz with a 100 W Xenophot halogen bulb running from a 12 Volt battery for scanning the fields and a Cluson 50 Watt lamp with halogen bulb mounted on the scope of the gun connected the the aux power socket in the Jeep. There are wires everywhere. With this setup I can take foxes out to 300 yards on a good night, more often at between 100 and 200 yards. Over the years I have tried most of the large Surefire incandescent's like the M4 etc and I even played with a 9p with a turbo head ( very technical for me ). Nothing came close to the Lightforce or Cluson spotlamps. Just recently I bought my wife a little single AAA Terralux flashlight and I was amazed at the beam not having tried a modern LED before. I went straight out and bought a ThruNite Catapult which I tried last night and although it is a thrower for sure I can't clearly identify a target at distance. I can see the eye reflection but hessitate in taking the shot. I have some smaller Fenix light's but they are just not up to the job, although very nice to own. My flashlight collection is growing,( which I don't mind ) but it looks like I will have to wait a bit longer before LED technology reaches the point where I can dump my huge spotlights. Hence my question about candle power and lumens. I thought if I could convert the large Lightforce's output to lumens I would have more of an idea as to what to look out for in LED. HID is not an option due to the way my lamps are used, on off on again etc. also their cost. If anyone knows of an LED that may do the job for me please let me know.
Last edited:
boz,
if you want to go LED + extreme throw you limit your choices to the very brightest LEDs on the market with large/deep reflectors. I guess there will soon (in 2010) be flashlights using the Luminus SST-90 LED (1500+ Lumens) that will be offering exactly what you need.
You might wanna start reading up about LiIon batteries and their chargers 'cos those lights gonna take a lot of them. ;-)
Edit: Stuff like this: http://www.cpfmarketplace.com/mp/showthread.php?t=199637
-Connor
Last edited:
TorchBoy
Flashlight Enthusiast
Method 1: Use the candela (millicandela) to lumen conversion wizard. You need to know the beam angle. I'm not convinced the CP figure is anywhere close to accurate, though, so use with caution.
Method 2: Calculate as Josey said. In these parts, 500,000 CP is typically used for 25 W halogen spotlights, 1,000,000 CP for 55 W spotlights, and 2,000,000 CP for 100 W spotlights. So a 1,000,000 CP spotlight here would be around 55 W x 20 lm/W = 1,100 lumens. Your Lightforce spotlight would presumably throw better and might well have a more efficient bulb, so 100 W x 22 lm/W = 2,200 lm.
That doesn't necessarily mean you need 2,200 lumens of LED-sourced light - John_Galt wasn't just being smart. I have a 2,000,000 CP, 100 W, 6 V SLA rechargeable spotlight. I'm sure it doesn't perform as well as your spotlights do but I stopped using it after I bought a 3xAAA zoom head torch for $9.90 from DX and was surprised to find it a whole lot more impressive than I thought it was going to be. I figure it produces somewhere around 200 lumens with fresh batteries but in spot mode has similar performance to the SLA spotlight, and it's much smaller, lighter, more versatile (zoom head), and has a much longer run time, while running on rechargeable batteries.
So a direct lumen comparison isn't always going to give an accurate result. There are other things to consider, like how the light is being thrown, and how tightly.
Sorry, I have no idea of an LED light that might be ideal for you.
JaguarDave-in-Oz
Enlightened
In my experience (and I'ev hunted in the Australian bush for near forty years), Lightforce makes the best hunting spotlights sold in Australia and if hunting conditions are simlilar in the old dart to here then I doubt you're going to find a hand held led thing to compete with them, especially since from what you wrote it is obvious that you have realised the most important aspect of nighthunting which is to be able to identify your target with one hundred and ten percent surety and also to ensure that you can clearly see whatever lays behind it.
Bronco
Enlightened
Hate to say it, boz, but given your need for a torch that can really throw a long distance, I'm not sure there are any LED lights currently available that will meet your requirements. There may be a couple LED based lights out there with an aspheric lens set up that would come close, but these units typically offer almost zero side spill. I'd recommend saving up a bit more and then looking for a good HID with hot restrike capabilities.
