Flashlight and Weapon Light Comparison - (posting for Bubba)

[greenLED]

I'm posting this for a fellow light/gun/gear head (reference thread). It's a really cool review of a *bunch* of lights commonly used with guns. :rock: He'd appreciate any and all feedback so the next review will be "better and more useful" (his words).

We spent an evening (and night) working on low light shooting drills. We do this regularly, and this time we decided to bring along some of our collection of handheld flashlights, weapons lights, hands free lights and keychain lights to test, evaluate and compare. Here are the results of our simple beam comparison test. We review lights made by Surefire, Streamlight, Princeton Tec, Fenix, Coast and others.

Here is the complete review of over 30 lights

A group shot of the various lights we tested for this review

Care to guess how much this pile of lights might cost?? (We don't want to, LOL)

We Reviewed Handheld Flashlights, Weapons Lights (for pistols, shotguns and rifles), Hands Free Lights and Keychain Lights by shining them at a large 4'x4' circular graph from a distance of 10 feet in almost total darkness. We were outdoors in the hills around Tucson, AZ on a moonless night. We looked at the lights beam with our digital camera, a Kodak C743 7.1 megapixel With and without a night vision device. We posted the results so that beam shape, intensity, coverage and spill over could be seen for each light and compared to each other.


Handheld Flashlights

Fenix L2D
Coast V2 Tactical Power Chip Torch, Model: 7736
Streamlight Stinger XT
Streamlight TL-2
Streamlight Scorpion
Surefire G2
Surefire G2 LED
Surefire E2E
Surefire E2D LED body with a KL4 Scout Light Head
Surefire E1B
Surefire L4
Surefire E2D
Surefire E2D LED

Weapon Lights

Surefire X200B
Surefire X300
Streamlight TLR-1
Streamlight TLR-2 Light & Laser
Streamlight M6 Light & Laser
Streamlight M3
Glock Tactical Light 22 Model: TAC 4065
Z5 Tactical Wave Light
Surefire M900A
Surefire M600 First Model Scout Light

Hands Free Lights

Surefire HL1-B-TN Helmet Light
Princeton Tec Scout Headlamp
Princeton Tec Matrix Headlamp
Petzl Tactikka Plus Headlamp

Keychain Lights

Streamlight Twin-Task 1 Cell
Streamlight Nanolight
Photon Micro-Light II
Maglite Solitaire
County Comm LED light

Lasers / IR

Laser Devices DBAL A2
Generic Green Laser
Pelican IR Strobe

Chemical Light Sticks

Military Surplus Light Sticks
Infra Red Light Stick
"Cheap" Light Sticks

Here is the complete review of over 30 lights

Here's a sample of our results

 

[Lightraven]

I wouldn't dare criticize someone who did this much work without direct compensation--good job, very useful.

Clearly, this is an evaluation of light for a specific purpose--illuminating a person or animal who may present a threat. Given the reviewer's orientation, I'd suggest something specific. In that vein, I would have illuminated an actual person dressed as a drug smuggler/border bandit (camo top or bottom, dark colored long sleeve shirt, jeans, baseball cap with duffle bag on back for the smuggler) walking through the desert scrub around Naco (no need to drive to Naco--Tucson desert is close enough)--carrying a rifle, handgun, or some non weapon item like a 1 gallon milk jug painted black. For the camera shy "smuggler" a bandanna over the face could be worn.

This gets right to the heart of what is being evaluated. To reduce some workload, I'd eliminate all photos of visible lights using night vision equipment and limit these NV shots to IR lights/lasers.

 

[bubba az]

Please don't hesitate to criticize the review or the tests.. I'd rather know what people are interested in than waste time on stuff no one cares about

For us this was mostly an effort to document how well our own lights work, I'm no professional researcher or anything.. So I'm always interested in new techniques, tests etc

but I did like the results so I plan to do it again with different lights, new tests, etc

Clearly, this is an evaluation of light for a specific purpose--illuminating a person or animal who may present a threat....

Actually no, we just wanted to see how well our lights worked compared to each other, and since we had a bunch of weapon lights there we included them too..
We are not rabid survivalists looking to light up targets or something, that's why I used a circular grid, so the results wouldn't be offensive to anyone and would offer consistency
I would have used something further away from the lights, but the digital cameras wouldn't pick up anything further than about 10 feet in the darkness

Perhaps I should break the review into two parts, one with just the non-weapon lights?

..carrying a rifle, handgun, or some non weapon item like a 1 gallon milk jug painted black..

I like the idea of a few objects to help define resolution between lights, so next time I'll add a few colored shapes or something to the target, thx

I wish my grid was white not green so we could see beam color better, but I work with what I have

To reduce some workload, I'd eliminate all photos of visible lights using night vision equipment and limit these NV shots to IR lights/lasers.

Workload is no problem, this is what we like to do, LOL

The IR photos help illustrate the intensity of the beams, that why I used that as a tool (plus we had access to them and it's fun to use NV, LOL

But I think it's helpful to see how much extra energy is being thrown out there buy some lights compared to others. Since the digital cameras can't pick up exactly what our eyes saw I think the NV is a tool to help gauge that

Thanks for the comments, it got me to register here so I could reply..
(another board to follow )

Please feel free to comment we have thick skins and I hope this is just the first of many light reviews we do.

 

[Bullzeyebill]

Nice review, and welcome to CPF.

Bill

 

[shomie911]

I think it's a well done comparison beamshot review. :twothumbs

I think next time you should add (in addition to the grid) several other targets. Person, building, etc. To help give a better idea of how each light works in seperate environments and for seperate purposes.

 

[isneyk]

two thumbs up! :twothumbs

 

[Hogokansatsukan]

So that was you out there in the hills behind my house!
I think it might be helpful to pick a better target. Generally speaking, when a light is attached to a firearm, you are either looking for a person, or you are raccoon hunting in AZ. These are the only two animals you can legally shoot with a light attached to your weapon, and you best be careful on the first!
I test my lights in different environments where they would be used. For your tests, if they are for "tactical" use of lights, I would set up various targets (real people if you have them) dispersed at different ranges and angles so that you can fully see what the light is capable of. Spill becomes much more important in open areas where quick threat detection is necessary, however if the light lacks throw, that may not be the light to attach to a rifle.
Forget about political correctness crap, and use people if that is what you are using the light to find and identify. FIDS
Find
Identify
Decide
Shoot
If people think that is "just not right" then they don't need to be attaching firearms to their lights and probably are not going to a "tactical" website or reading reviews on sights that have evil, bad guns on them. Don't worry what others think. Do what works for you.
Just my 2 cents. Use people or targets of people.
Now, if I worked as a vetrinarian and used the light to identify the dog I was putting down, then perhaps I would have targets of Shitsus, Chihuahuas, and perhaps Beagles.:naughty: I don't though, so I shoot at targets of.... human beings. Homo Sapiens. PEOPLE. And that is what my lights are for finding and identifying. And drugs... and weapons... and the occassional bomb.

 

[Lightraven]

Bubba, I understand what you're saying.

I wasn't implying so much that anybody writing or reading this review might be a survivalist, as much as they could be regional law enforcement or military (say, military police officers at Fort Huachuca) that would be interested in your pictures when deciding on a light to purchase. The example target/scenario I gave is very true-to-life, not so much from my overwrought imagination!

Of course, your intended audience must be your guide. Perhaps rubber rattlesnakes, cholla cacti and other hazards? I remember sticking my hand on cholla one night and thinking that stealth was overrated.

 

[greenLED]

:welcome: Bubba! Glad you could make the jump over here. I'm a big fan of the reviews y'all post.

I skimmed through your write-up but didn't find which camera settings you used. It's useful when comparing between lights to set the camera on manual and fix the aperture and speed. Otherwise, the camera self-adjusts to the output the comparisons are not true to the relative output between lights.

Other than that, excellent job! :rock:

 

[bubba az]

:welcome: Bubba! Glad you could make the jump over here. I'm a big fan of the reviews y'all post.

I skimmed through your write-up but didn't find which camera settings you used. It's useful when comparing between lights to set the camera on manual and fix the aperture and speed. Otherwise, the camera self-adjusts to the output the comparisons are not true to the relative output between lights.

Other than that, excellent job! :rock:

Thanks...

I didn't even think ... I left the dang camera on 'auto' the whole time..

OK next one should be much better than and we'll deff set up things at distance !!!

 

[JBorneu]

First of all, thanks for all the work you put into that.

On the pictures, the Surefire G2 seems to be a lot brighter than the G2L. The G2L however gets a higher lumens rating on the Surefire website. Is the beam of the G2 more focused than the G2L, is incandescent that much easier to see or did it look the other way around at night and is the auto camera setting playing tricks on us?

 

[greenLED]

JB, see my note about fixing the camera settings.

Looking forward, Bubba!

 

[bubba az]

First of all, thanks for all the work you put into that.

On the pictures, the Surefire G2 seems to be a lot brighter than the G2L. The G2L however gets a higher lumens rating on the Surefire website. Is the beam of the G2 more focused than the G2L, is incandescent that much easier to see or did it look the other way around at night and is the auto camera setting playing tricks on us?

Thx, it was fun to do

The G2 has more throw and a more focused beam for sure, the G2L has more spillover or wash or whatever (the G2L lights the room up more)

Which is easier to see? well that depends on the person I think. We spent some time lighting up the trees and rocks 50 - 100 yards out (with other lights, not the G2s)
Some of us liked the incandescent more, some liked the LED
(I'm an LED fan because it's a more clear or white light to my eyes)

I own both of the G2s, I think the incandescent offers more throw, but for durability and overall use, I carry the led version

I like to use lumens as a guide, but I don't trust them, that's part of the reason we wanted to get these results in one place so we could compare them
It's also why I like the NV shots, you can see with some (especially the incandescent) how much energy they push out

But when you compare the NV to regular vision, that extra energy doesn't always equate to visible light

I think the lasers are a good example.. they throw a ton of energy, but offer little if any visible light as a result

The camera photos still work as a gauge in this review, the beam sizes and shapes are pretty much what we saw out there that night. The settings we will adjust will just let the camera 'see' things further off for our next test

our next evaluation will try to answer the questions we raised with this one though, LOL