Any surefire E1L fans

MarkS

Newly Enlightened
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May 19, 2008
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I think the surefire E1L is the perfect outdoor camping light

The 3 lumen low and 45 lumen high is all the light I need for the outdoors especially with the insane runtime of 48 hours on low and 8-9 hours on high.

I think the fact that it does not have a higher lumen setting insures that you do not get greedy with the higher setting and kill the batteries. Helping you avoid to bring spare batteries with you.

Are there any other lights like this?
 
hi & welcome to CPF,

while i do not own that version of E1L i do believe the beam may not be suited for outdoor vegetation.

on High- centre hotspot good for distance illumination, wide spill for those few steps ahead. but batt gets drained fast & unit tends to also warm up fast (may or may not be an issue).

on Low- centre hotspot good for mid distance illumination, wide spill may not be bright enough upfront depending on vegetation. batt's life extended, reducing the need to lug many spare batts.

i have used lights for nighttime scrambling with such beams before, namely Peli's M6 (2330 & 2390). personally find such beam charactor's high contrast between to hotspot & spill far from useful. i got a headlamp instead strapped onto my backpack. :thumbsup:

for that price point a decent headlamp with multiple brightness can be had.
 
I think the surefire E1L is the perfect outdoor camping light

The 3 lumen low and 45 lumen high is all the light I need for the outdoors especially with the insane runtime of 48 hours on low and 8-9 hours on high.
...

The 2-level Cree Surefire E1L is my best EDC light so far. I use the 45 lumen setting most often. Going on the 8th week of daily usage powered by the original battery. It is quite good for outdoor use and the current version behaves nothing at all like previous poster described about the earlier version.
 
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I have a camping trip coming up and the E1L is coming along. I am amazed by the runtime. I use it a lot and I'm still on the original cell. I have other lights to use when I need something brighter.

:twothumbsto the E1L
 
I have both the 30 lumen and 3/45 lumen cree E1L lights! Plan to use them for camping myself this year.
 
I've just been camping & hiking for the weekend.
The E1L, E2L, L1 and L2, G2L, U2 and a few other SureFires I'm sure nobody would be interested in were put to use.

The most important thing seemed to be the lights having a lanyard so they were less easy to misplace. Two of the girls attached glow-sticks to the lanyards.

I personally use headtorches whilst camping - I fielded three P-Tec EOS (in orange) and each of the tents had at least one Photon (white) of various types hanging from the 'roof'.

I did pause once of twice to consider that whilst the rest of the group each had a SureFire, I had an EOS and a Photon and not even my SureFire EDC most of the evening times! When you lend out well over $1000 of SureFires and keep two non-SureFire lights worth, what, $50? for yourself perhaps SureFire still have some work to do when it comes to making flashlights for general use round camp.

Al
 
each of the tents had at least one Photon (white) of various types hanging from the 'roof'.

I did something very similar when camping :eek: Nice to have some "fixed" lighting without the bulk of lanterns.

...and a few other SureFires I'm sure nobody would be interested in...

Try us :D

Regards,
Tempest
 
Not to want to take this thread off topic - I think that discussing the merits of the dual-output E1L as a camping flashlight is a good thing - but as I mentioned before, I could have used any flashlight I wanted and I selected an EOS and PhotonII.

As to the nature of the other SureFires I had - whether you believe me that there was no :devil: involved - just an M6, M3T, A2 and a few more for exploring further afield after dark...

Al
 
I've got both versions of the E1L and I am definitely a "fan".

Huge runtimes especially with the E1L/Single, plus still humongeous runtimes with the E1L/Dual make them one of the best lights to throw in a bag when you don't want to have to worry about packing extra batteries.

As far as the appearance of vegetation at night, I still don't get it. When LED's finally showed up that were white (instead of blue) and hit 30 lumens plus, I gave up on Incans entirely.
Now, Incans are just battery killing, sickly yellow relics of the past. Don't miss 'em at all, especially outside at night when I can do a 200+ lumen blast with any "common" LED light.

The E1L's are "the little engines that could" from the old nursery rhyme.
 
The 3 lumen low and 45 lumen high is all the light I need for the outdoors especially with the insane runtime of 48 hours on low and 8-9 hours on high.

I'm pretty sure you won't get 8-9 hours of 45 lumen light from the E1L.
 
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