mgc8
Newly Enlightened
Hello everyone,
I've been lurking around here for a few weeks, and I must say I found the information both impressive and entertaining. Being hopelessly addicted to technology in most of it's forms naturally lent itself to a great degree of flash-craze; therefore I can easily say I'm a (beginner) flashaholic
I've been obsessed about lights from a very early age. I still remember the awe with witch I used to look at the lights from my childhood -- sorely underpowered even then, but nostalgic classics by now. Being born in the 80's in an "iron curtain" country, we only had access to some very poor lights, mostly russian or east-german in origin. One of the best was the german "campinglight", seen here in it's orange incarnation:
It had two bulbs which could alternate to give flood or a decent throw. Back then we used it a lot when the lights would run out (which was quite often) and sometimes in the holidays when hiking. The batteries would run out pretty fast though, making for a poor runtime. I still wonder what could be achieved with that huge reflector and a modern LED + Li-Ion's :naughty:
The most sought-after light of kids back then was a rather strange, all-plastic light with 4 different modes: white, green, red and strobing yellow, all using a single bulb but with a smart coloured-plastic mask moving in front of it. I didn't manage to find pictures of it on the Net, maybe someone else recognizes it? Quite the gimmick, I actually used this light to climb 500m through the woods in total darkness sometime in high-school... I had to squint to see three meters in front of me. What a guy does for a girl, eh?
I can't forget here the very small "EDC" light of the time (heh), a small tube made of extremely poor plastic that held a simple bulb connected directly to an AA cell. You'd push a plastic pin on it's end to turn it on, and it even had "lock-out protection" in as you could loosen the cap slightly and it wouldn't turn on anymore) Unbelievable as it may sound, I actually used the thing to read in the darkness (some books were too good to put down even after "lights out", hehe) and I even carried it in my pocket at school. What's more, the thing has survived to this day!
Later in life we actually got more "enlightened" with higher quality lights. One of the first was a "999" like this one:
... which even had a "momentary" switch but the greatest leap which brought us in the modern age with regards to lighting technology happened in the 90's when I got my hands on my first "true" light ever -- a quite solid at the time Energizer/Eveready "Double Barrel" that impressed everyone with it's aluminium construction and bright beam:
... and it's smaller siblings that were used primarily inside the house by the whole family (not actual pic, this one is newer):
These lights were great actually, and I never felt the need for another one for quite some time. The small ones were very popular for walking around the house, changing light-bulbs and looking under furniture for lost items, we actually bought a couple for the grandparents as well. The large one was my main flashlight for years on end, and it saw extended use for both mundane things like walking around the house at night or looking for things in dark places, as well as hiking in the woods and on old dusty country roads. It proved it's worth many times in power outages and it actually has a decent throw and long runtime with it's 8xAA's/4S2P.
I noticed a thread on these very forums about modding the Eveready and I must say I'm very inclined to try it -- although the plastic head is problematic with regards to heat, I somehow feel I "owe" it to this old light to upgrade it and lengthen it's life in some way
All that being said, we slowly got to the present. Sometime at the end of last year I found myself looking at an exciting tutorial on Youtube about modding a small flashlight to be a "burning laser". A surprisingly short time after that, I was swimming deep inside LPF reading everything I could, my eyes getting larger and my jaw dropping further. Needless to say, one thing led to another and soon I was all over CPF as well... A few short weeks and several burning holes in the walet later, I am now a certified flashaholic with a small but growing collection of beautiful lights:
From left to right that would be SolarForce L950M (SSC P7), Dereelight DBS-V3 (3SD, SMO, R2/WC) and Ra Clicky (140Cgt). I find the L950M simply astounding, it's by far the brightest LED I've seen (I know, I'm new to this, bare with me), the Dereelight will always hold a soft spot in my heart as the first of the new wave of lights I received after meeting CPF (and it's a great thrower, but you already knew that), and the RaClicky is just so useful that hardly a day goes by that I don't grab it -- recently for example I had to check the power cables running around a false-ceiling with 16 spot-lights; needless to say, the Clicky together with a small wireless "spy-camera" were the only tools I could fit up there, but they sure did their work perfectly! I'm very happy with all the lights, and, as you might expect, more will be on their way
This is my way of saying "hi" and I hope I'll be able to contribute to the great community here! Happy to meet everyone and best regards to you!
P.S.: a few pics above taken from http://www.flashlightmuseum.com -- I hope it's alright with them...
All the best,
Mihnea
Edit: Removed all the hotlinks and replaced with ImageShack thumbnails... Sorry about that!
I've been lurking around here for a few weeks, and I must say I found the information both impressive and entertaining. Being hopelessly addicted to technology in most of it's forms naturally lent itself to a great degree of flash-craze; therefore I can easily say I'm a (beginner) flashaholic
I've been obsessed about lights from a very early age. I still remember the awe with witch I used to look at the lights from my childhood -- sorely underpowered even then, but nostalgic classics by now. Being born in the 80's in an "iron curtain" country, we only had access to some very poor lights, mostly russian or east-german in origin. One of the best was the german "campinglight", seen here in it's orange incarnation:
It had two bulbs which could alternate to give flood or a decent throw. Back then we used it a lot when the lights would run out (which was quite often) and sometimes in the holidays when hiking. The batteries would run out pretty fast though, making for a poor runtime. I still wonder what could be achieved with that huge reflector and a modern LED + Li-Ion's :naughty:
The most sought-after light of kids back then was a rather strange, all-plastic light with 4 different modes: white, green, red and strobing yellow, all using a single bulb but with a smart coloured-plastic mask moving in front of it. I didn't manage to find pictures of it on the Net, maybe someone else recognizes it? Quite the gimmick, I actually used this light to climb 500m through the woods in total darkness sometime in high-school... I had to squint to see three meters in front of me. What a guy does for a girl, eh?
I can't forget here the very small "EDC" light of the time (heh), a small tube made of extremely poor plastic that held a simple bulb connected directly to an AA cell. You'd push a plastic pin on it's end to turn it on, and it even had "lock-out protection" in as you could loosen the cap slightly and it wouldn't turn on anymore
) Unbelievable as it may sound, I actually used the thing to read in the darkness (some books were too good to put down even after "lights out", hehe) and I even carried it in my pocket at school. What's more, the thing has survived to this day!Later in life we actually got more "enlightened" with higher quality lights. One of the first was a "999" like this one:
... which even had a "momentary" switch
but the greatest leap which brought us in the modern age with regards to lighting technology happened in the 90's when I got my hands on my first "true" light ever -- a quite solid at the time Energizer/Eveready "Double Barrel" that impressed everyone with it's aluminium construction and bright beam:
... and it's smaller siblings that were used primarily inside the house by the whole family (not actual pic, this one is newer):
These lights were great actually, and I never felt the need for another one for quite some time. The small ones were very popular for walking around the house, changing light-bulbs and looking under furniture for lost items, we actually bought a couple for the grandparents as well. The large one was my main flashlight for years on end, and it saw extended use for both mundane things like walking around the house at night or looking for things in dark places, as well as hiking in the woods and on old dusty country roads. It proved it's worth many times in power outages and it actually has a decent throw and long runtime with it's 8xAA's/4S2P.
I noticed a thread on these very forums about modding the Eveready and I must say I'm very inclined to try it -- although the plastic head is problematic with regards to heat, I somehow feel I "owe" it to this old light to upgrade it and lengthen it's life in some way
All that being said, we slowly got to the present. Sometime at the end of last year I found myself looking at an exciting tutorial on Youtube about modding a small flashlight to be a "burning laser". A surprisingly short time after that, I was swimming deep inside LPF reading everything I could, my eyes getting larger and my jaw dropping further. Needless to say, one thing led to another and soon I was all over CPF as well... A few short weeks and several burning holes in the walet later, I am now a certified flashaholic with a small but growing collection of beautiful lights:
From left to right that would be SolarForce L950M (SSC P7), Dereelight DBS-V3 (3SD, SMO, R2/WC) and Ra Clicky (140Cgt). I find the L950M simply astounding, it's by far the brightest LED I've seen (I know, I'm new to this, bare with me), the Dereelight will always hold a soft spot in my heart as the first of the new wave of lights I received after meeting CPF (and it's a great thrower, but you already knew that), and the RaClicky is just so useful that hardly a day goes by that I don't grab it -- recently for example I had to check the power cables running around a false-ceiling with 16 spot-lights; needless to say, the Clicky together with a small wireless "spy-camera" were the only tools I could fit up there, but they sure did their work perfectly! I'm very happy with all the lights, and, as you might expect, more will be on their way
This is my way of saying "hi" and I hope I'll be able to contribute to the great community here! Happy to meet everyone and best regards to you!
P.S.: a few pics above taken from http://www.flashlightmuseum.com -- I hope it's alright with them...
All the best,
Mihnea
Edit: Removed all the hotlinks and replaced with ImageShack thumbnails... Sorry about that!
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