Roy
Farewell our Curmudgeon Administrator
In the "Natural World" things decay. This decay is often referred to as "half-life", the time it takes for something to decay to half of it's original value. Since a flashlight operating on batteries has a light output that decays as the battery power decays, could we not refer to the operating time of a flashlight in terms of a percentage of it's initial brightness?
At the present time, there is no set of standards that I know of in the flashlight community that defines how to describe HOW a flashlight performs. We are all familiar with the confusion over the use of Lux, Lumen, and Candlepower!
One way to describe the performance of a flashlight is with use of a run-time plot. This a graphical representation of the brightness of a flashlight over time. While a graph is a good way to describe the performance of a flashlight, it is not always a handy thing to use.
If we choose to define the operating performance of a flashlight as a percentage of the initial brightness of the flashlight, then that value can be determined from the run-time plot. In the past I have referred to the operating performance of a flashlight as the half-brightness or the 50% brightness. It does not have to be 50%, it can be ANY value. In fact, the folks at Inretech proposed 25% brightness!
I would like to see some discussion on how to define Operating Performance and what value to use. It would really be helpful if those that manufacture flashlight would take part in the discussion. It would be a milestone if CPF could initiate the first performance standard for flashlights.
At the present time, there is no set of standards that I know of in the flashlight community that defines how to describe HOW a flashlight performs. We are all familiar with the confusion over the use of Lux, Lumen, and Candlepower!
One way to describe the performance of a flashlight is with use of a run-time plot. This a graphical representation of the brightness of a flashlight over time. While a graph is a good way to describe the performance of a flashlight, it is not always a handy thing to use.
If we choose to define the operating performance of a flashlight as a percentage of the initial brightness of the flashlight, then that value can be determined from the run-time plot. In the past I have referred to the operating performance of a flashlight as the half-brightness or the 50% brightness. It does not have to be 50%, it can be ANY value. In fact, the folks at Inretech proposed 25% brightness!
I would like to see some discussion on how to define Operating Performance and what value to use. It would really be helpful if those that manufacture flashlight would take part in the discussion. It would be a milestone if CPF could initiate the first performance standard for flashlights.
