thermal guy
Flashaholic
No talk on this yet?? Looks great.
Terry: If you extrapolate their graph the TK75 should maintain 5100 lumens for 2-2.5 minutes before it steps down to 2500 lumens. Just given the graph size/resolution it could easily be +/- a minute or two from that.
SwedPat: Yeah sadly the ANSI standard was a good idea to get everyone to test the same, but the test itself is flawed in that it allows companies to "pad" their runtimes by allowing them to run down to 10% of original brightness. So companies that want to provide a flat brightness output for the life of the batteries are actually handicapped by this system. It makes lights with a super bright startup, then regulated MUCH dimmer down to 10% of that initial peak to get a misleadingly high runtime number. What they should have done is put the level of brightness maintained at something like 90% of initial to reward companies providing regulation for constant brightness, not using regulation to get ridiculously high lumens that only last for a couple minutes. We've gone back to what we had before regulation, lights that were really bright at startup and 5 minutes later they drop way off, the only difference being that drop off is usually to some flat regulated much lower output.
Perhaps what they need is 2 sets of ANSI tests, one for non-regulated lights in which they could run to 10% of initial brightness, and regulated lights that have to maintain at least 90% of initial brightness.
Here's the issue to me:
Company A's light runs at a regulated 500 lumens for 4 hours, starts at 500 lumens, ends at 500 lumens.
Company B's light runs at 1000 lumens startup, 2 minutes later it drops to 120 lumens for 6 hours.
I'd MUCH rather have/use Company A's light, but company A is forced to say they have a 500 lumen light that runs for 4 hours, but Company B gets to say they have a "1000 lumen" light that runs for 6 hours. As a result of course people buy Company B's light because who doesn't want "twice as many lumens" with 2 hours "more" runtime. Worse yet it's caused Company A to do the same thing to be on a level playing field. If the consumer doesn't have actual lumen vs runtime charts, which almost no one provides, you have no idea if they are just doing that for Turbo mode or all modes etc.
Anyway, rant off, it's hijacking the thread, and as long as the ANSI standard stays the same it won't change. I will give Fenix credit again for providing those charts where most companies don't.