Greetings to the enlightened ones

[HitecDrftr]

Hello everyone,

I am the HitecDrftr. (Name inspired by a Clint Eastwood character) This is my first post.

I am a new member to the CPF, but have been perusing the site for a couple of months now. It fascinates me that so many people are so addicted to portable light. (And how easy it is to become addicted to portable light :candle:.) I am wondering if you can remember back to when YOU first became so enthralled with the power of light. What was it that set you off, to the point at which you decided to join the CPF?

If you are like me, it was when you were introduced to (and came into possession of) a light source whose power far exceeded anything you had ever seen before in a unit of that size. And, if you are anything like me, you became infatuated with the power, and subsequently, corrupted by it. (After all, absolute power corrupts, does it not? )

It wasn't long before you became intoxicated with the bragging rights this portable light had so instantly bestowed upon you. The power stirred a primitive warrior spirit within you, and you set out to conquer (figuratively) all other light sources; the crusader within you set out to convince others that the crusade for your light source was noble and just.

Your campaign took you many places in the quest to prove dominance, and along the way, you ran across legions of formidable challengers, each with their own strengths and weaknesses. You sought to learn more about those strengths & weaknesses. In doing so, you gained both wisdom & humility, for those who seek to challenge the unknown invariably become schooled by it. There will always be new entrants in the battle for ultimate candlepower, and the ultimate lesson learned is that all glory is fleeting.

But I digress.

What I find missing in these forums is a common standard of evaluating light sources in an objective manner. Sure, integrating spheres are great, and cross sectional beam graphs can be objective, but the vast majority of us don't have them. What ideas, (if any) have the members come up with to evaluate the many facets of light sources in a unified way, and in which the equipment is inexpensive enough and common enough for any member to be able to replicate in their own homes, such that we can compare (and verify) the results of others? Beam shots just don't tell me much. Has a panel of "experts" ever convened to discuss the possibility of a unified evaluation method?

Thanks for listening.

The HitecDrftr

Edit: Here is a link to my 2nd ever post.
http://www.candlepowerforums.com/vb/showthread.php?t=211902

Or, you can just download a copy directly (MS Word) of the experiment I performed here:

http://home.comcast.net/~rasanford1/Flashlights/Quantitative evaluation of light utility.doc

 

[Gunner12]

:welcome:

A few people here have used a light box similar to the one Flashlightreview used to estimate output. A few have made integrated spheres and some have access to them.

 

[Derek Dean]

Howdy Hitecdrftr and weclome to CPF,
Yes, I remember what it was like to find CPF 2 months before the first Fenix Cree light was released...... what a frenzy that was!

I've also seen some folks try to establish a standardized methodology for taking beamshots so that we have some basis of comparison..... but the best we have come with so far is to be sure and include another light's beam in the photo that we are familiar with so that we have an unknown quantity being compared side-by-side with a known quantity.

There is one review site that has established his own comparative setup and has a nice side by side feature on the site that lets you compare both features and beamshots of up to 3 different lights that he has reviewed:
http://www.light-reviews.com/

We will look forward to hearing your sad tales of woe as you begin your dark journey into flashlight addiction.

 

[HitecDrftr]

Thanks for the link Gunner12. I have a similar idea to Quickbeams for a light evaluation method. It involves a digital camera, and some free software called ImageJ, which is downloadable from the National Institute of Health. I "subjectively" rank ordered the output from eight separate light sources, (including a Craftsman Lasertrac laser level) for what I call their (overall utility) or "useful light". I then took photos in a darkened room using a relatively controlled setup, and performed image analysis on the photos, comparing average pixel values (0= black, 255= white) for each individual image. I will post in greater detail later, (I have to go to work now) but in my initial experiment I got a strong (>97%) correlation between my subjective rankings and the average reported pixel values for each light source.

Hitec