Losing Perspective?

[Flashlight Aficionado]

I was doomed before I started. Every light I bought wasn't bright enough from day one. Then I got a SF 9P. I found it to be tolerable. It got the job done, but just barely.

Just so you guys don't think I am completely nuts

My first light a minimag was just bright enough to keep me from tripping over things in the dark. The next one I could identify the object, but not with 100% certainty. Then I couldn't see into dark areas of brightly lit rooms. When I got the 9P I could see into those dark places, but just barely.

Now I have plenty of light at 100 SF lumens. But I am not satisfied. I have started to lose perspective. I need help. :help:

 

[Chrontius]

No, sorry, that's not perspective loss, we can't help with that.

What you suffer from is mission creep.

 

[Flashlight Aficionado]

What's mission creep?

 

[jankj]

What's mission creep?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mission_creep

I'd rephrase it into something like this: The creeping transformation of a concrete and achievable ambition into something which is diffuse, vague, unattainable and totally unrealistic.

Or in practical CPF terms: I want a light to see X so I can do Y becomes something like I want a collection of flashlights that actually makes my life better.

 

[NonSenCe]

uh, some of you guys must be going blind.. seek eye doctors! ;) jk.

but.. yes. i see the problem too.. it is also creeping up on me.

just few months ago i thought small incan as good and powerful. then i found led flashlight. and then cpf. and then more flashlights.

and well.. couple days ago i just had to change 2d bulb back to maglite to check how dim it actually is. and shined all the other small lights i have got next to it. just pathetic! or so it seemed.

and i havent yet got a mce or p7 type of lights or rops nor real hids. -so i still have time till i end up completely blinded by light.

glad im more into adjustments, beams, colors, sizes, shapes and such than all out power. most needs for flashlights i have are not that far anyways.. between inch to 100feet. mostly between 1 and 10ft. so low output is still useful to me. (many tasks incan minimag might do ok still.. but with modern led tech i can have that close up work beam and still reach out further.)

you loose perspective when you follow the cutting edge here. you know where it is, and you know approximately how far you are from it with your equipment.

then you start to forget how far ahead you are of the "normal" people,, u know the ones that use 2 dollar 2d plastic incan as their "big and powerful light that needs to be tapped couple times before it turns on",,

you keep upgrading and changing as the technology improves and you dont even notice it really happening.. but the normal people, they do not upgrade their lights like you do, they might be happy with the ones they have if they dont know any better. its up to you to "force" them to upgrade as well.

it would be wise to keep those oldies goldies lights close by and use them somtimes too, so you can see where the actual reality still is and where you as flashaholic are.

(im afraid to go and fetch the minimag from my other car now for battey change. last year it was still ok, but now.. hmm..)

 

[gsxrac]

I was JUST about to start a thread on this. I remember when I got my first Surefire 6PL and I remember just how amazingly bright it was! Now when I cut it on I feel like it's gotten Dimmer bit I can't justify spending $20 on another P60L just to compare it when that $20 couldhave went towards a M60W

 

[american lockpicker]

I was JUST about to start a thread on this. I remember when I got my first Surefire 6PL and I remember just how amazingly bright it was! Now when I cut it on I feel like it's gotten Dimmer bit I can't justify spending $20 on another P60L just to compare it when that $20 couldhave went towards a M60W

Is it brighter that a regular 6p with a p60?

 

[gsxrac]

I haven't even tried that yet but I think it's just me because my Novatac 120T is looking dim also.

 

[Daekar]

I'm finding myself in conflict over brightness lately - that is, two things consistently occur to me:

1) None of my lights are bright enough. My Malkoff M60 isn't bright enough, my N30 isn't bright enough, my 2x18650 body driving a LF EO-M3T at 450 bulb lumens isn't bright enough. My L2D-CE is paltry, and my L0D-CE is totally inadequate. Bright enough for what? Inadequate for what task? Paltry compared to? Bother me not with specifics... :D

2) Bright isn't enough anymore. Color rendering is important, and even more important at a distance where you actually need more light. My Malkoff M60 washes out objects in blue. My N30 has a nice low color temperature but lacks a complete spectrum and simply seems to wash out objects in yellow instead of blue. Out of all of my lights the only one that provides adequate color rendering at a distance is my KT2 + 2x18650 + LF 450 lumen incan. Since I modified my L0D-CE with a Q3-5B I find that it seems brighter and more useful than ever and my other lights are finding themselves used less. I suspect this trend will continue until I can get around to tinkering a SmartPD D20 in neutral white into my EDC ensemble.

 

[vali]

I recently got across a thread in another forum wich I think is a clever example of what we are discussing here. To summarize:

"Average Joe" enters there to ask for a flashlight and people recommend P7 because "brighter is better" about 50% of times.

There, if you dont have a 900 (900 in DX I mean) flashlight you have no opinion. Good batteries are DX unprotected ***Fire ones and the affordable lithium chargers you can get there too are good. Someone just stated that getting rid of the regulator and make a light direct drive is "improving" it. Of course no one warned the "average Joe" guy the dangers of rechargeable lithiums (lithiums are not dangerous because you can store them in a protecion bag).

2xAA size is useless because you can get a 1x18650 wich is better and use a P7 wich is more efficient. The E01 is just useless because its better to use moonlight to such a crappy light. A 40 min. runtime flashlight (TK-702) is great because is bright (90 lumen... yeah, sure, at least 80 because they measured the current consumed) and good quality (comparable with a Fenix).

Of course when I said 100 lumen is enough for a in-house use and using Eneloops is the way to go for people who use a flashlight only in power-outages and allmost all the time it will be dumped in a drawer they acted like I was arrogant and have "the truth" and spoiling another ones' thread is a "bad taste" thing. They even complaint about using the "average Joe" term.

Some of them will probably read this and get hungry. I dont care. And I will not even waste my time reading any more of that "smart" ppl comments. I probably didnt talk about it if a thread like this happened.

For me that is a perfect "perspective losing" example.

 

[Helmut.G]

lol, great thread!
I still know how amazed I was after I modded a cheap 1 W 3xAAA light with an SSC P4 U-bin in 2007:eek:
this thing was so much brighter than my other, much bigger flashlights:sssh:
the beam outdoors was incredibly and I couldn't stop bragging about its LED (it was the world's most efficient there was :thumbsup:)

then in 2008 I bought my first 'quality' flashlights. a P3D, the new REBEL 100 version along with a L0D
OMG I was blown away again! it was about two times of the initial brightness of my once so great 1 W thing on turbo, but not only for the first five minutes.
It was also much smaller and thus easier to EDC :welcome:

now, my fenix T1 doesn't seem to throw very far and a P61 is only bright enough for indoors :ohgeez:

 

[rockz4532]

Ever since I built my ROP....low, I have always thinked that my P2D was out of battery. I wonder what a Mag85 looks like...

 

[Chrontius]

I recently got across a thread in another forum wich I think is a clever example of what we are discussing here. To summarize:

"Average Joe" enters there to ask for a flashlight and people recommend P7 because "brighter is better" about 50% of times.

There, if you dont have a 900 (900 in DX I mean) flashlight you have no opinion. Good batteries are DX unprotected ***Fire ones and the affordable lithium chargers you can get there too are good. Someone just stated that getting rid of the regulator and make a light direct drive is "improving" it. Of course no one warned the "average Joe" guy the dangers of rechargeable lithiums (lithiums are not dangerous because you can store them in a protecion bag).

2xAA size is useless because you can get a 1x18650 wich is better and use a P7 wich is more efficient. The E01 is just useless because its better to use moonlight to such a crappy light. A 40 min. runtime flashlight (TK-702) is great because is bright (90 lumen... yeah, sure, at least 80 because they measured the current consumed) and good quality (comparable with a Fenix).

Of course when I said 100 lumen is enough for a in-house use and using Eneloops is the way to go for people who use a flashlight only in power-outages and allmost all the time it will be dumped in a drawer they acted like I was arrogant and have "the truth" and spoiling another ones' thread is a "bad taste" thing. They even complaint about using the "average Joe" term.

Some of them will probably read this and get hungry. I dont care. And I will not even waste my time reading any more of that "smart" ppl comments. I probably didnt talk about it if a thread like this happened.

For me that is a perfect "perspective losing" example.

Where exactly did you see this?

 

[f22shift]

2) Bright isn't enough anymore. Color rendering is important,.

yes easy to lose perspective and hard to be impressed anymore. maybe all new innovations especially with the premium chinese brands are going to be disappointments because the benchmark is too high.

and i agree with the color rendering. you can get spoiled with more neutral leds.
now normal white tint seem blue. but after using the white tints for awhile you start thinking the neutral is to peachy in color. i guess the brain adapts.

 

[Tempsho]

True. I guess this is what drives us flashaholics to get the newest and brightest.

It's only a matter of time before a flashaholic steals the luxor hotel spotlight!
Fourty billion lumens.. Wonder if I could fit it on my keychain?

BVH's Carbon-arc is "only" 525,000 lumens, while the Luxor is at a cool 40,000,000,000.

CPF: Because 6-figure illumination just isn't enough.

Is there any information on the spotbeam on the Luxor hotel? Google couldn't draw any decent sites. I thought the GE Carbon Arc was nuts, 40,000,000 lumens though :faint: You would get vaporized if you stood in front of that thing!

 

[flashy bazook]

It kind of reminds me of an old saying I've heard. "The more you have, the more you want." Think of how satisfied you were 5 years ago with your brightest light. More than likely it's now just an average light to you, even though it's just as bright as it was back then.

Not exactly. I wasn't satisfied 5 years ago with my brightest light, I kept looking for something better. More often than not anything I bought in search of something better turned out to be just as bad as what I already had (if it still worked, which it often didn't).

There were the Surefire incans, of course, but I was never willing to be burning through 4-6 very expensive cells in 1/2 hour to get the output.

The big difference now is not only the better output and runtime and availability of rechargeable battery solutions (such as Li-Ions) which are acceptable in terms of cost and results, but also that you don't have to do extreme mods to get them.

As to whether we are spoiled, I think LEDs still have room to go for outdoor and big throw applications. It's now "easy" to get 500 lumens but it is still a "room lighting" kind of application rather than big focused throw. Plus why not a bit better output/runtime availability (better efficiency).

Some "custom" applications (e.g., tailcaps) are also often lower quality, either don't work as you expect, or don't work at all. It would be nice if the quality all around improved more.

Rechargeable battery technology also needs to improve (this is a problem in general, not only for flashlight applications, e.g., electric cars are pushing the technology ahead of where it really is right now).

These Li-Ions are still behind in terms of capacity relative to primaries.

All this is not to disagree that there HAS been great progress in flashlights, especially in the past 5 years, just that we are justified in wanting yet more!!

Comparisons with "average" buyers are fun, but do not really prove anything other than that many people do not pay attention to flashlights because they rely in general availability of light in their homes and parking lots. This is again a more general truth, people rely in grocery stores having cheap food and water flowing through their faucets...let's hope this situation continues!

 

[SUREFIRED]

I'm itching for a M3L or M3LT, since my E2DL just doesn't seem like enough... :thumbsdow

 

[Juggernaut]

When every I’m off perspective “like when I’m outside with a EO-13 and thinking that it’s not enough:ohgeez:”. I have to think back to my first “wow” light. When I brought a 6D xenon Maglite to my friends campout, no one could stop complimenting how crazy it was:laughing:, all 124 Lumens seemed like the brightest thing on earth:grin2:. I made a big point of showing it off to, now I’ll go camping with them and bring things like my EDC-P7 and The M90 EO-13 and I’ll say nothing about the scorching 700+ Lumens coming out of them. I named that Mag, Day-Maker and it’s hard for me to think I though it was anything like “day” back then;).

 

[mmajunkie]

When I start to lose perspective I take mine outside and play with it for a while, all the oohs and awes or enough for me.

 

[Illum]

I think visiting corn mazes or going on cave tours might forcefully pry back the perspective loss...but where I am... I try to go for walks with friends on trails and purposely use a conventional flashlight
it doesn't seem to help...theres always this urge to dish out your surefire, fenix or modded mag and wash out all the artifacts dancing around you:huh: