1 Why does the TK75 look not very bright, when i shine it near a streetlight?
2 Why does it only look very very bright, when i shine it outside in the real dark areas, outside a city?
3 My neighbour says ,he is not impressed at all, when i showed my TK75 at turbo to him, (but was near a streetlight) he says, his brother has a standard maglite, that is considerably brighter than my TK75 ,he says.
Why do he say this?
Please help me, with this questions.
Remco
Its mostly because people are HORRIBLE judges of brightness, and are always fooled by lux.
Think of it this way:
A car headlight might be sending out ~ 650 lumens or so...depending on which one.....and it spreads it out wide in a fan pattern, with a top cut off, so more of the lumens sent out are concentrated on the bottom/ground side of the fan's pattern.
An LED maglight might be able to put out ~ 131 lumens, but they are all concentrated into a teeny dot of light.
We can't SEE lumens. We can only SEE what the photons bounce back to our eyes look like. The amount of light that bounces off the target to our eyes is referred to as LUX. So, essentially, what we SEE is the LUX, not the lumens.
So, for the average joe blow, and most flashlight affectionados as well, we will perceive a teeny spot of high lux as "brighter" than a ginormous flood of lower lux.
If we compare the bounced back light (Lux) to the depth of water on a surface, and compare the lumens to the water flow from a hose....we get a scenario where we can imagine that we can put our thumb over the end of the hose, and choose to send out a small stream of water that goes farther, or, a larger stream that pours out of the hose but doesn't shoot out much, etc.
If we are going to fill a swimming pool, say to get it 6' deep, it takes a LOT of water....many many gallons, etc.
If we only need to fill a tall skinny cylinder 6' long, we may only need ONE gallon, etc.
So, lights that have a floody beam are covering a large (Swimming pool type area), and use most of their power to achieve a moderate level of light over a broad area.
Lights with a tight beam (Such as a maglight), would be like filling that pool with a water pistol. The teeny squirt would hit the pool floor and all you'd see is a few drops worth. Use the same wee squirts to fill a shot glass, and it can make it deep though.
So, I regularly see people for example, who view a 950 lumen SC600 shined on a wall 20' away vs a 131 lumen maglight, and report that the maglight was "Brighter"....because their eyes perceived the teeny bright spot as the measure of "brightness".
If all you are concerned with is what others think of your light, just get aspherical lensed lights that concentrate all the power into a small point of bright light, and wow your friends.
If you want to SEE things with your light, try this experiment - Go to a place where there are an assortment of potential targets covering a wide area, say a grave yard (Lots of tomb stones), etc, and turn on one of the lights, and count how many things you SEE. Then, turn that one off, and turn on the other one, and repeat the process.
The one that helps you to SEE MORE is the one that is typically more
useful.