Bulb types?

[testno2283]

hi,
im newish to flashlights and ive only ever had LEDs or incandscent bulbs, i was wondering would someone please be able to post a list of any other bulbs on the market to allow me and other people that havent got much experience just to find a little about it.
i.e a few advantages and disadvantages and maybe a senario where a certain bulb is better, and if its not asking to much maybe a torch name with that type of bulb please.
thanks alot, very much apreciated matt

 

[Marduke]

You may want to read through the Welcome Mat

:welcome:

 

[bigchelis]

Hi and Welcome aboard.
My knowledge is limited, but from purchasing ebay lights, Deal Extremes, and Surefire lights I will only purchase Surefire now.

Get a cheap Surefire 6P and you have everything you will ever need. It will not give you reliability issues like the china brands and it just looks good.

Also,
Malkoff Devices makes 11 plus drop-ins for it, just in case you don't like the stock performance.

If you like the yellowish tint of the stock bulb, then Malkoff Devices has M60W The "w" means warm or incan like.
Here is laundry list of P60 drop-ins Surefire G2/6P's will accept
http://www.candlepowerforums.com/vb/showthread.php?t=193992

Finally, to keep things simple just get primaries for now untill you learn as much as you can about rechargeables.

My primaries are Surefire 3V.

Merry Christmas,
bigchelis

 

[Yoda4561]

Other than Incan and LED, the only other major bulb technology you'll see in a consumer flashlight is HID. These use a brilliant arc of superheated plasma to produce light. They're similar in efficiency to LED but can handle far higher levels of power. They're often used in larger applications for long distance illumination as well as some car headlights. There's a fair number of these ranging from small handheld lights to microwave oven sized super-long range illuminators and range in cost from 100USD to many thousands of dollars.

The best first step into this type of lighting is either a POB (power on board) HID, sometimes you can spot them for ridiculously low prices on ebay. It's fairly large and clunky though. A better option is the N30 from batteryjunction, but it seems they're out of stock until early 2k9, probably because of their upcoming L35 model, which is sort of an upscale N30. These are awesome, as they're about the size of a common 6 volt floating lantern from a department store. These put out over 3000 lumens for an hour of runtime.