Candlepower overrated by Pelican??

[JB]

Someone posted here that the candlepower ratings given by Pelican are exagerrated. Consider this example:

The Prolite 4C is said to have 40,000 candlepower. It's also said to produce 400% more light than the standard PR13 lamp. A PR13 outputs 28.5 lumens. So 400% is 142.5 lumens.

Another 40k candlepower light is the Streamlight SL-35X. As for lumen rating the SL-35X is supposed to be 450.

So what gives here? Although lumens and beam candlepower is hard to correlate, this is such a huge gap between those two lights above. Is Pelican over-rating their candlepower, or don't tell me their reflector assembly is *that* good.

 

[Brock]

I also think Pelican is overstating it for another reason. The SL-35X uses the same lamp as the Surefire 12PM, and it pulls about 25 watts. Now as far as I know there is no way 4 C cells could supply 25 watts. Can you imagine a C cell supplying 4.5 amps? I don't think so.

The more lights I have, the more I am finding a direct correlation to lamp wattage and light output. Granted some lamps have better efficiencies, but they still fall about in line.

The only other way they could get a CP that high could be by focusing the light in to an extremely tight spot of light.

Brock

 

[JB]

<BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>The only other way they could get a CP that high could be by focusing the light in to an extremely tight spot of light.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE>

Yeah, like with the Mitylite Magnum. I was keen on that for the 8k candlepower rating, but then read that the beam was very tight and not practical for most purposes. Oh well, like they say "if it sounds too good to be true..."

 

[Size15's]

The Pelican MityLite Magnum has the thinnest beam of any flashlight I know. The beam is tighter than a...

So it's not really useful for anything much.

Al