Hi!! I appreciate the thorough response... I looked at that standards thread and posted a comment to it. I believe putting a price tag on any discussion of standards is a scam and its a huge red flag to me, and that's exactly what I said in that forum.
Now to your questions:
....but a guide for who and for what? E.g. you might have a caver, a plumber, a LEO and a high school student who are all equally uneducated about flashlights, but they'd all have vastly different requirements. Should we be general and let the LEO find out for himself which light is less prone to failure, or should we include info that the high school student doesn't need?
Why not be general? Again, I point to a light bulb as an example (just for the light and energy parts). What does it say?
Energy: 60 Watts
Output: 840 Lumens
Avg life: 1000 Hours
Very telling, very brief and concise too. Granted, light and battery combinations, some with specific applications, different lenses, bodies, shock resistance, etc. is more complicated. No one is saying otherwise. But I'm only talking about a guide, not the whole user manual. Do you understand?
A picture could indeed work for some of those. Regarding range, how do we define it? I could make a good case for a "distance you can see a cat at", but at the same time that fails to take into account human variability, and is hardly easy to measure. I can also easily foresee a company massaging the numbers as well.
If I could draw, I would create something that looks like the profile or overhead view of the beam pattern and show the range of brightness with tinting. A long narrow white region might indicate candlepower, and a short broad region might indicate output, although anything within the area that casts light could be averaged as well. There are lots of ways to depict light, but there is probably one way that is simpler than others and would capture the attention of people easier while not allowing the maker to BS anyone.
I did consider color temperature, but as an example, see the Luxeon binning chart here: ....Many bins can be described as 6000K, but there are still differences in each of them.... How well different colours are rendered by a light source. For further reading I recommend McGizmo's excellent thread,
High CRI and its significance.
I will have to look at that thread when not in edit mode. Your chart link did not come trhough for some reason, its a broken link. But generally, can color temperature account for much beyond taste? Some people like bright white light. Some like it more in the blue or violet range. I do like to see that number because I feel think 6000 is approximately the same as sunlight, isn;t that right?
Maybe I've been frequenting online stores too much (there not being many good flashlight stores in Australia), but I was under the impression that that knowledge was already normally available, e.g. on 4Seven's website.... On similar news, here's an interesting thread that was started during your absence:
http://candlepowerforums.com/vb/showthread.php?t=244611
Knowledge available on websites is good, esp. for verification... but it doesn't do you much good when you're standing in teh store. Neither does a light that allows you to turn it on (under flourescent lighting?)... athough its better than nothing and I applaud them for doing it, its not alwasy practical to have batteries present, esp. for higher performance equipment that use a pack.
Personally, THAT is what you'd need for a standard to be meaningful, at which point it becomes meaningless to the average consumer. Otherwise a company can quite easily twist all the data to suit their needs (e.g. a company that lists the runtime at the lowest setting and the lumens on the highest setting).
Look at my light bulb example above. Its not that confusing. The extra part in the types of lights discussed on these boards is the battery. Its the other major concern, esp. for bikers or adventurers or cavers (and certainly divers!).... But I think it can be told in very few words, or terms or with a couple of pictograms. Any ideas are welcome! Again, I assume nobody likes being ripped-off. Also, I loosely describe a rip-off as being the inability to learn what's necessary as an average non-technical buyer.... (to compare with other products and to know at least something objective about the performance)
Thank you for yor detailed response.
Cheers!
