hey! I'm a fellow pizza delivery driver, been doing this for a few years now till I find something useful to do with existence, lol
Part of my reason for being HERE (CPF) was to find better lighting solutions for my job.
I can tell you the following things that I have learned about lighting up addresses.
1. extremely focused lights suck for this because you never know where to look on a house for an address, in some neighborhoods, they are all over the place, sometimes on the garage, near front door, on the mailbox, lol.... (focus is good to a point, you just don't want lazer beams, anything with a slightly textured reflector spreads it out enough)
2. extremely floody lights are also impractical, because they rarely have the punching power to reach out and overcome ambient lighting that may be partially blinding your view of an address.
3. Incandescent light is the only way to go.(the 1W LED lights like the SL pro-poly people are recommending are completely useless in 80-90% of address identification circumstances, the beams are too tight to hold steady and find the address, and the light gets washed out by ambiance most of the time) So many addresses are black on brown, or brown on black, or funky brass reflective on white, etc etc... the wide color spectrum of incandecent is a must for actually being able to read some of these tough situations. The other issue is that often times you'll have a porch light that is positioned such that it blinds you, but does not illuminate the address at all, in these situations, it takes an enormous amount of illumination power to overcome the light that you are looking into (which is constricting your pupils), normal LED lights (there are custom multi-emitter exceptions, but most are too big) just do not have the oomf to over come this issue.
4. Big lights are difficult to deal with with 1 hand on the steering wheel(or possibly also juggling a shifter if you drive a manual). Try not to exceed a "C" body size, or a 3 "C" length... I prefer smaller than that.
5. The switch needs to be easy to operate with 1 hand. I prefer smaller lights that have a standard "clicky" switch on the tailcap, the tailcap position is always easy to locate in the hand regardless of how you pick up the light.
6. The batteries need to be rechargable, because we don't make enough money to replace primaries on a high power light all the time.
7. You actually need very little runtime. In a night of deliveries, you'll turn it on many times, but only for a few seconds at a time, (flash a few houses, pissing off some people, etc, lol), 10-20 minutes would actually be enough. But more is always nice so you don't have to recharge every night when you get home.
Having said all that, I still don't own the perfect light. I've played with some stuff... Honestly, this job doesn't pay enough to afford the ideal light for it.
My ideal light, (which I do not own), would be a Leefbody 2x18500 C tail M head, with a KT4 and a MN16 lamp. this would be the perfect deliver light. perfect size, perfect runtime, perfect focus, perfect OOMF (lots). But the cost of prohibitive at this time.
So in the mean time I have made do with some of the following..
a 2C mag modified with 2 17500 li-ion cell driving a 5 or 6 cell mag xenon lamp... this works pretty decent, the 5 cell lamp is really impressive, but they burn out too often, the 6 cell is lacking a bit in the whiteness department but is doable also... survives forever on this type of battery configuration.
a "4 cell(cr123)" ultrafire with a Surefire P91 lamp and a pair of 17670s... used this one for a long time, good results but too floody, the overall light output is so immense that in most situations it works fine, lighting up the entire front of a house. The MN16 in a SF turbohead would be the same amount of lumens, just tightened down to the perfect beam IMO!
a brinkman maxfire with a LF HO-9 and a pair of RCR123... this is actually almost perfect.. it's got the throw and the oomf for 90% of stuff, you could do this to your G2, (think lumens of the P61, but more concentrated, probably more lumens)
Played with some luxeon 3W throwers (LEDbeam) and found that it works fine as long as there is no ambient light.
Something a LOT easier on the pocketbook than a leefbodied li-ioned SF build.. that would probably work about just as well... would be a Wolf-Eyes M90 with a LumensFactory EO-9L D36 lamp... which is very similar to the MN16 as far as power goes. A pair of 18650s, and that would perfect!
) I recall tossing maglites (really, best available to general public at the time) out my window and investing in one of those cigarette lighter 1 mill CP spotlights..
