A Difficult Case?

[leathan]

Dear all,

Please kindly recommend me a flashlight.

Application: work as national park gamekeeper, kept in car
Budget: as much as justified
Body: Handheld, robust (will drop once in a while), waterproof, no excessively fancy design (traps dirt easily)
Size: not small, preferably 20 to 35 cm (8 to 14 inch)
Emitter: not sure (will a high quality LED do?)
Light:
- neutral color, rather warm light (neither too cold/blue nor "odd" light making color perception difficult)
- good spot (spotting animals in the distance) and at the same time good throw (illuminating larger areas smoothly without blinding me) -> focussing head would be great
- several power levels
- red filter if possible
Battery: may be rechargeable, should last roughly 1 to 2 hours at high power, 12 hours at dimmed/normal
Power: high, but light quality more important than excessive power
Switch: preferably body mounted (operate with one hand while walking normally), please no switching through strobe mode during normal operation

Hoping for your input.

Best wishes,
Leathan

 

[Lurveleven]

How far away are the animals you are going to light up? And how well do you need to identify them?

 

[Jash]

I'm going to suggest the Armytek Barracuda. It's almost right for your requirements except it has a rear mounted switch. It comes in a warm (4000k) option if you don't like cool white. It is one of the farthest throwing stock led flashlights at a reasonable price - $140 odd delivered. You'll need some quality li-ion cells and charger, but once you have that sorted you won't look back, and $200 should have you covered for everything.

FWIW the Barracuda is going to be my next light (birthday present to myself).

 

[leathan]

Thank you for your suggestion. Unfortunately the Armytek Barracuda warm version and its accessories are hard to obtain in Europe. I whould have mentioned that I am not from the US.

I need to identify species, sex and age of the animals from the distance. Distances not more than 200 m usually. Then again I need a rather dim, diffuse work light for maintaining feeding places, setting up traps, repairing my broken car, taking notes, etc. And I don't really want to carry around two flashlights.

I am currently using a conventional Maglite 3D. I was very happy about the adjustable light cone and the light quality, but it either was not bright enough (distance) or too bright (close range).

After some research and reconsideration, I modified my requirements:

- warm, color neutral light still very important
- powerful beam when needed
- a red filter
- a (good) diffusor
- robust, waterproof body
- size: 8 to 12 inch, diameter not too small (gloves, etc.)
- a low power level for comfortable close distance work during night

 

[dss_777]

I hate to say it, but I really think you need two lights: a good task-specific game spotter of the warm/neutral/ and/or high CRI for good color rendition. Sorry, I can't recommend anything there- not my lane.

And the second light for close in work should be a headlamp. Except for long-distance spotting, all the other tasks are perfect for the headlamp. Hasn't it been a bit of a pain to do all those things holding that Maglight under your arm?

 

[TEEJ]

As mentioned, for close up task lighting, a head lamp is typically the best solution.

I personally find that they work best for this sort of thing, except I personally hate wearing anything on my head.

:D

As for the range needed, to do a good job lighting up a large mammal (deer, etc,) at 200 meters, to resolve most needed details you describe, you'd need about 15 lux on your target at ~ 200 meters. You might see that something was out there reasonably well at even 1 lux though, and if there was enough contrast with its background, be able to guess at what you were seeing well enough.

To turn that into specs, to put one lux on something 200 M away requires a light with a 40,000 cd rating, and to put 15 lux on it would require a light with a 600,000 cd rating.

There are a lot of choices in the 40k - 100K cd range, but when you start to get much above 100k cd, the choices are in progressively rarefied air.

Typically, if a beam is optimized for distance, the beam angles are small and tight, to concentrate the light on distant targets...and that tends to make them less useful close up, as you get a small circle of light that you need to "aim" at what you need to see.

A floody beam is FAR more useful, albeit at the compromise in range. As you are conceptually OK with a "foot long flashlight", you could look at lights with a range of beam profiles and outputs for the run times of interest to you. LED lights can come with ranges UP TO about 1 million cd, if you want to spend ~ $700 US for example...or for less than $300 and about half that cd, and so forth.




To help calibrate the maglight you are used to in terms of the cd, I see you call it a 3D, so I know it uses 3 D-cells, but, is it an LED or incandescent light?

Did it have an ANSI Range spec?

Tell us how far away you COULD use that maglight for, and have it work WELL...and we can interpolate/extrapolate from there.

A strong floody beam that has enough range for you, but which can be turned down to lower outputs, would not even need a diffuser for example.

Mags HAVE TO concentrate the beams to reach anything with their puny output...but they typically do at least have some range to them as a result...but no real close-up flood abilities.



:D

 

[Bicycleflyer]

have you looked at Led Lenser? They are a German company and I would think their brand may be easier for you to get. Typically, almost all their flashlights have an adjustable focus.

Another suggestion would be Fenix. Models like the TK41, TK50, TK60, and TK45.

As far as your red filter goes, you can fashion one easily for just about any flashlight. Do a google search and you will find some more on this. I think another method is to cut some Diffuser film. I've never used it, but from what I understand, once cut to size it will just stick onto the flashlight lens.

 

[leathan]

I am starting to become comfortable with thinking about buying a handy, low power led flashlight with a wide, diffuse beam for work purposes (with also warm light and a red filter) and task specific game spotter as suggested. I don't want to work with a head lamp.

The maglite 3D i was using had a conventional xenon? light bulb, which could be focussed when needed to a very narrow beam. Since I have good eyes and some experience, i could still identify game in 150 meters distance. It was sufficient in most of the cases, but i certainly wouldn't mind some more power.

I don't think I need more than 100k cd, all I need is the right beam profile and a good light "mixture" for night works.

It is hard for me to compare conventional light with LED light since all LED flashlights which i have seen so far either have excessive cold color spill, reflecting from nearby objects and fog, impairing night vision or they have large disk shaped spots with "sharp edges" which are not good either.

What I ideally need is a smooth transition away from a bright, very small central spot, and all that in a rather warm light color. A too floody light will not work because reflection from close objects makes it very hard to spot things in the distance.

Shops here mostly sell olight, fenix, nitecore and led lenser.

 

[Lurveleven]

Your Mag 3D only gives 6185 cd (with fresh batteries, and goes very quickly down from there), so that gives 0.27 lux at 150 m. Lets compare that to Eagletac SX25L2 with Turbo head, that light gives 81500 cd, which gives 3.62 lux at 150 m (or 2.07 lux without the turbo head). You can get the SX25L2 in neutral white, there are diiferent variations of neutral white, and the one Eagletac has put in their neutral white lights is the best I have seen so far. The SX25L2 has a side switch as your Mag, and it has a very nice ergonomics. It can be bought from NKON (which is a Dutch shop) (they are temporarily out of turbo heads).

 

[Jash]

Contact Gene Malkoff and ask him to make you a warm Maglite dropin. It'll give you killer throw for your stock Maglite, while giving you the brightness and reliability of a newer led light.

Gene's stuff is some of the best in the world.