Spotlight Questions

I need a spotlight to see quite clearly at at least 200 to 300 feet. I'm mystified as to how to select a light. I've tried numerous lights, mostly halogens, from several manufacturers. Advertised candlepower numbers and distance numbers don't seem to have anything to do with how bright a light is or how far you can see clearly with a light. Neither does price. What numbers do I look at to select a light, since these numbers are useless?

I've tried one HID light and the candlepower number on this light seemed deceptive too. I need help understanding some things about HID. First off, what does the term "Pencil beam" mean? Also, how long does it take a typical HID hand held spotlight to warm up to full power?

I need something that doesn't cost a fortune and something that is light weight, with a 12v lighter plug.

I see some reasonably priced HID lights from China on ebay. Are these going to work?

I had some old Brinkmann 3M CP lights that were better than some of the pricier, higher CP lights that I've tried. The plugs on these lights were terrible though. The kept losing contact or falling completely out of the socket. I'm tempted to just get some good plugs to put on these old lights, but would like to see first if I can get something a bit brighter for a reasonable price.
Thanks in advance for any advice.

A "pencil Beam" simply means that the lights reflector is able to gather most of the light produced by the bulb and focus it very tightly into a small diameter beam. The purpose is to allow the light to "throw" further out in distance than a wider, floodier beam. You sacrifice some field of view.

If your budget is around $130 to $140, then the LightForce Blitz 240 is a Great, 100 Watt Halogen, cigarette coil corded handheld. It's a pistol-grip style. It has an excellent performing reflector that can be adjusted easily to go from flood to throw or anything in-between.

Typical HID's will take from 10 to 15 seconds to get fully warmed up and and produce full brightness. They do not like to be turned on and off for short runs. It wears the bulb out much faster. HID's are 3 times more efficient than Halogens. You get three times the brightness for the same amount of battery power consumed and they typically throw further.

For you relatively short distance requirement, the Blitz would work well and it's fairly light-weight.

A large impediment is that those lights are famous for bogus numbers and for battery death, etc.
For the ranges you mention, a smaller led light might actually work better.

Thanks for your replies.

I asked a dealer of the Lightforce Blitz 240 what the candle power of this light is and was told 1M CP. I am currently using a relatively expensive 5M CP Halogen that often won't let us see at 100 feet. I know that CP is an unreliable measure, but still, that is quite a difference. How far do you think I could see clearly with the Blitz?

The costly 15M CP HID that I tried did let me see a little further in a tiny, tiny little area, but was very dark outside of that tiny circle. I don't know if this is typical of HIDs. We do have to turn the light on and off quite frequently.

What kind of distance can you see with the LEDs? I thought that they gave much less distance than the Halgens and HIDs. Is that correct?

TEEJ, thanks for your reply. I guess that I'm going to have to go measure some of these distances better. Maybe they are much greater than I thought. There's no way that a little light will allow me to see clearly enough at the distance that I need to see. I guess I must be estimating the distance wrong. My co-workers and I have tried about 15-20 different lights from several manufacturers, ranging from an alleged 200,000 CP to a supposed 15M CP, and none of these has been adequate to see the distance clearly enough. When I have a chance, I'm going to go walk some of the fields and try to get a better measure of them.

Yes, let us know the actual distance that you're dealing with and what you're trying to see and do so we can have a better idea of what will work best for your needs. Candle Power is simply a measurement of the amount of light hitting a single "point in space". It says nothing about how large the spot and corona are and how far the light with throw. It is not representative of amount of light the spotlight produces. So using a CP measurement is not necessarily going to give you what you're looking for. The Blitz probably IS 1 Mil CP when in its' tightest focus.

khq0660 said:

TEEJ, thanks for your reply. I guess that I'm going to have to go measure some of these distances better. Maybe they are much greater than I thought. There's no way that a little light will allow me to see clearly enough at the distance that I need to see. I guess I must be estimating the distance wrong. My co-workers and I have tried about 15-20 different lights from several manufacturers, ranging from an alleged 200,000 CP to a supposed 15M CP, and none of these has been adequate to see the distance clearly enough. When I have a chance, I'm going to go walk some of the fields and try to get a better measure of them.

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The key concept to absorb, first, is that the average spot light maker's claim about the light's CP is 100% meaningless. You simply have o ignore everything they claim, as testing, and your own personal experience, tell you that they are full of BS.



Once you stop trying to compare a 1 million cp spotlight to a 15 million cp spotlight, after you realize the 1 million cp might be better because the 1 million cp might be closer at least to the truth (Albeit doubtful...) and the 15 million cp light might have 1/2 the throw, etc....you can start to make sense of it all. (NO sense to the cp, just forget claimed cp as a spec)

In real life, the cp is based upon ANSI standards. Also in real life, they don't like using ANSI standards, because REAL numbers are no where NEAR as good as far as marketing goes.



OK - Next issue: See how far you are really talking about. In meters preferentially.

The throw is measured in terms of the lux at one meter, or the candela (Sort of what the cp is SUPPOSED to be describing...). Lux is how bright the target looks when the light reflects off of it and bounces back to your eyes. You can't SEE lumens...what you do see is the lux from the lumens hitting stuff and bouncing back to your eyes.

A light with 1 million lux at one meter would have a range of over a mile, to the ANSI standard range of 0.25 lux. As most people require more like 1 lux at longer ranges to actually resolve anything, most of us use 1 lux as a more realistic lux limit for range. (Seeing a guy in white a few hundred meters away, etc...)

If the guy is wearing a darker/lower contrast color, the lux required to see him goes up proportionally, with even 15 lux not being enough in some cases.

So, even if rated at a mile of throw, you'd take a half mile as throw to 1 lux (The intensity falls off according to the inverse square law, so its 4x brighter at half the distance, or, 4x dimmer twice as far away, etc...).




That all means that with 1 M cp, you might see a guy in white standing there at 1/2 mile, and at ~ 250 meters, a guy in brown, etc. (Off the top of my head, the math is guesstimated...actual numbers might be close though)

Having just completed some very high power light testing with beam shots, (Maxabeam, Megaray, Locator) and thinking in terms of Search & Rescue, it would be difficult, even with these lights, to see a motionless human lying on the ground at any more than about 1500 feet with an unaided eye.

BVH said:

Having just completed some very high power light testing with beam shots, (Maxabeam, Megaray, Locator) and thinking in terms of Search & Rescue, it would be difficult, even with these lights, to see a motionless human lying on the ground at any more than about 1500 feet with an unaided eye.

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Quite true.

Standing is hard enough if there's low contrast.



Even in broad daylight, that sort of distance (~ 500 yards) is not that hard, prone, to go unnoticed at.


500 yards is actually really far to see any real detail at in daylight. Scopes and binoculars, etc, can help a lot.

If your distances are right you might like these.

Watch the videos.

search the LED forum for TM26 review.

What are you trying to clearly see at 100m? Trees, Parked cars, hidden deer, snakes, SAR victims, hiding people? What color is the target and the background?

What conditions are there? Are you looking across a field, or through dense fog, through the woods, or in an urban area?

What light pollution is there? Do you use optics?

I am trying to see horses. Most of them are dark in color and often times they will be bunched together or next to dark fencing. I need to be able to find them against the dark background, and count the individual horses even when they are the same dark color and bunched together. I will have to turn the light on and off a lot as I drive from one field to the next. The light will be used every night from sundown to sun up. It's every night of the year, so the conditions vary. It is a given that if the fog is dense then I won't likely see much of the horses unless they are near a front fence. The light will be plugged into the 12v outlet in the truck, so I am looking for something without a battery in it. The background light varies depending on which direction I am looking and also on whether the sun is starting to go down or come up. Optics? Forgive my ignorance, but I don't know what that means. Binoculars perhaps? No, I don't use anything like.

I plan to more accurately measure off a typical distance tomorrow morning and will report back on that. It's a roughly 2000+ acre horse farm divided into various size fields.

I learned that I'm no good at guessing distances. A lot of the fields have views obstructed by hills and trees after the first 300 feet or so,so I will have to walk into these fields or drive behind them anyway, but there are plenty with longer unobstructed views. I picked a mid-size unobstructed view, figuring that if I had enough light, my eyes would be capable at this distance, which measured at 1010 feet. I know that it will likely be impossible to get a light that will carry that far and allow me to see the detail that I need, but how close can I get to that? I'd like to hear any suggestions.

After measuring, I guessed that my current light, the expensive alleged 5M CP light, give me good detail up to maybe 200 feet.

khq0660 said:

I learned that I'm no good at guessing distances. A lot of the fields have views obstructed by hills and trees after the first 300 feet or so,so I will have to walk into these fields or drive behind them anyway, but there are plenty with longer unobstructed views. I picked a mid-size unobstructed view, figuring that if I had enough light, my eyes would be capable at this distance, which measured at 1010 feet. I know that it will likely be impossible to get a light that will carry that far and allow me to see the detail that I need, but how close can I get to that? I'd like to hear any suggestions.

After measuring, I guessed that my current light, the expensive alleged 5M CP light, give me good detail up to maybe 200 feet.

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If I call that ~ 310 meters, to get some ball park numbers:

To tell that there's something out there, you'd need ~ 1 lux minimum. To get 1 lux at 310 meters, the light needs ~ 100,000 cd (100k cd) to do it.

Depending on how hard it is tell tell one horse from another at 310 meters for you...(How night adapted your vision is, how different they are to you, etc...), you would probably need 5 -15 lux on them to resolve that detail.

5 lux would require ~ 480 k cd

10 lux would require ~ 960,000 cd

15 lux would require ~ 1,440,000 cd


There are options in these ranges. Depending upon your actual ranges and resolution factors (Your vision, your horses, etc) the answer will most likely lie between the cd's in the above ranges.


For perspective, when calibrating for night shooting, using a scope, a marksman might need ~ 0.5 - 5 lux (On the target) to aim a rifle at a white paper target at those ranges....depending on the night vision of the shooter, etc.


Also keep in mind that the lux and cd estimates are based upon actual performance, not advertising claims, etc.


Do you have a budget for this?

A candela = 1 CP, correct? So, for the desired 15 lux I would need 1,440,000 CP? My current supposed 5M CP light doesn't come anywhere close to carrying that far. My previous supposed 3M CP light carried further than the current light, but still didn't carry quite that far. So, since advertised CP doesn't mean anything, how do I find a light that will actually provide the desired 15 lux---or at least something much closer to the 15 lux than my current light? Thanks.

khq0660 said:

A candela = 1 CP, correct? So, for the desired 15 lux I would need 1,440,000 CP? My current supposed 5M CP light doesn't come anywhere close to carrying that far. My previous supposed 3M CP light carried further than the current light, but still didn't carry quite that far. So, since advertised CP doesn't mean anything, how do I find a light that will actually provide the desired 15 lux---or at least something much closer to the 15 lux than my current light? Thanks.

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This is where objective testing by members of this forum comes in handy.



IE: We test things for our own use, and, you can glean info from that.

If I knew your budget, I could make some suggestions to try out. I am imagining that the scope of work you are doing is to protect a significant investment, or, you could just wait 'til daylight to check on them, etc. That would imply that to do it properly, the cost/benefit ratio would allow a significant outlay.

There are some HID lights and some LED lights that could work.

One factor that may be an issue is that the lights ALL concentrate the beam into a small spot to have enough juice to hit distant targets....so that you won't see much at a time.

With a 1.2º beam angle for example, at 310 meters, the spot would be roughly 5.6 meters across (~ 18' or so)



Some data on some known spot lights commonly found on shelves:

3 MILLION CP Brinkman Q-Beam III = ~ 96k cd/1,200 lumens

2 MILLION CP Brinkman Q-Beam II = ~ 88k cd/820 lumens

1 MILLION CP Brinkman Q-Beam I = ~ 24.8 k cd/564 Lumens


As you can see, while there is a slightly proportional trend, its not even close to accurate as far as output.


To go out on a limb, and take the roughly 200' that you feel your fake 5 million cp light is outputting, that's ~ 61 meters.

Now, it might have been 200 meters not 200', as you were a bit hazy on your distance estimates before.

If you can tell us the actual range the actual fake light WAS OK at for your needs, and the specific make/model of the fake light, we might be able to use that to "calibrate" what you need in real life.

Unfortunately the farm went out and bought several of the current crummy light after we discovered that the plugs on it are good, so I'm not in a position to ask them to provide a different light for me at this time, so I'm on my own buying another light for myself. If I really had to go over $200, it would be quite painful to me--not impossible, but painful. The Blitz recommended above is a great price, but perhaps it isn't strong enough for my purpose?

I just sold off my last Blitz 240 otherwise, I could shoot it at 350 Yards. I firmly believe it will do the job. It has a nicely focused beam that throws further than what you need but it also has good spill so the field of view would be acceptable at that range. It is actually a little more than 100 Watts when plugged in to a vehicle with its' engine running (higher supply Voltage).

khq0660 said:

Unfortunately the farm went out and bought several of the current crummy light after we discovered that the plugs on it are good, so I'm not in a position to ask them to provide a different light for me at this time, so I'm on my own buying another light for myself. If I really had to go over $200, it would be quite painful to me--not impossible, but painful. The Blitz recommended above is a great price, but perhaps it isn't strong enough for my purpose?

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The Blitz is rated at ~ 730k cd.

The HID version is rated at ~ the 1.44 million cd you need though....albeit the HID version is going to be more expensive than the halogen version.



There are also options such as:

http://www.candlepowerforums.com/vb/showthread.php?361206-New-LEMAX-LX70-Killer-Polarion-PH50






Depending on if someone dies and leaves you $/lottery win, etc.

Chances are the rating is at 12.6 nominal Volts. An extra 1 to 1.5 Volts makes a big difference. Beyond the numbers calculations, I've seen what it does at that range.