Kem, Perhaps your meter is unable to keep up with the current usage as light flashes on and off many times a second, and is reporting more of a peak current rather than an average over time.
My Momma told me not to stare at the sun, but perhaps the answer to the Eternalight's battery life may be found by staring into its beam.
If you point the light at your face and wave it vigorously back and forth across your field of vision, you'll notice that the first one or two levels of dimming are achieved by actually dimming the LEDs -- the arc traced by the light on your retina will still be continuous. After that, you can see that the LEDs are pulsed on and off, leaving a trail of dashes in your eye. The dashes shorten in length relative to the gaps of darkness as you go down the dimness scale. The last few levels of dimness are achieved by turning off one, two, then three LEDs.
If we presume that the pulsed flashes are the same intensity as in the dimmest non-pulsed setting, then we could get an estimate of the current draw of a dimmed LED by measuring the total current draw in that setting, and dividing by four (the # of LEDs). If we can multiply that current by the proportion of time that the light is on in the lowest brightness setting (e.g. 0.2 if it's on 1/5 of the time), we'd have an estimate for the average current draw over time in the dimmest setting (pulsed, with a single LED).
One could estimate the proportion of time it's on by eyeballing it while waving it around (e.g. if it looks like the dashes are 4x the length of the dark parts), or perhaps waving it around while taking a time exposure with a camera.
Of course, this would still be just an estimate - it would be best to measure the current with an oscilliscope, I suppose.
<FONT COLOR="#000000" SIZE="1" FACE="Verdana, Arial">This message has been edited by mcjamison on 01-04-2001 at 11:55 AM</font>