Valolammas
Enlightened
I know you are all thinking "oh no, not another A2 thread", but since it's mandatory for CPF members to make an A2 appreciation thread at some point, I thought I'd take care of it, since I actually used mine today and was happy to use it.
My wife and I currently live in a nice apartment. I has been just right for us, but now we have a son, who, it appears, isn't getting any smaller, so sooner or later we are probably going to get a bit crowded. So we are looking for a house (and also because my wife wants a garden to toil in). We are not in any hurry, but we go and take a look every time a promising one turns up for sale at a not-quite-exorbitant price. I find I actually like doing this, since it's always interesting to see different kinds of houses. Besides, it provides a really good reason to peer under roofs & foundations and into all the dark corners and crevices that a house has, without the fear of getting arrested. We went to see a couple of houses today, and as we were leaving, my wife actually asked me to take a flashlight along. No problem, dear! (I already had three, but let's not tell her that.)
So. Almost every time I go take a look into a dark basement or under the foundation there's some couple there saying "we should have brought a flashlight" to each other. Naturally, I'm the only one who ever does. But since – for some unfathomable reason – no-one else ever does bring a flashlight to these house exhibitions (is there a proper term for this in English?) I'd feel a bit self-conscious carrying a big, really powerful light around, especially at summer, but the A2 is perfect for this purpose, since it's small and inconspicuous. Sure, there are other lights that fit that criteria, but the A2 has certain other advantages as well. I'm sure you all know all about it's LEDs and regulated incan beam, so I won't bore you with the specs. If you don't, go read JS's erudite and unabridged A2 thread.
The LEDs are perfectly sufficient for looking into closets, small storage spaces, just seeing the lay-outs of rooms etc. But the cool thing is that with the LEDs, you don't really have to point the light at anything, they just provide a sort of area illumination. If you have a beam with a hotspot, you have to point it at something and then your eyes (and everyone else's) tend to follow the hotspot. Yeah, sure, you can do the ceiling bounce, but I find many people look at you funny, if you point a flashlight at the ceiling, when you are not actually looking at the ceiling.
And the incan beam? I find it provides just the right amount of light to be useful without being blinding or insufficient. Yes, the color rendition is a thing of beauty and has helped me to spot a number of rotting or moldy ceiling or floor beams, but the thing I'm most impressed with it is how it never hurts to look at the beam. The incan beam is directional, of course, but it doesn't have a small, really bright hotspot. Instead, it has a fairly large and smooth (dare I say diffuse) bright, well, "hotarea". You can tell it's bright by the way it throws and lights things up, but even if you use it up close, it's never blinding or inconvenient. Not in the way a tight hotspot is. For example, the UKE 4AA will out-throw the A2 even with its 2W bulb, but the tradeoff to that ability is that close up, the UKE's hotspot is tiny and too bright to look at directly. Not so with the A2. It just lights things up and does it beautifully and pleasantly. It's a joy to use at any distance.
The two-stage tailcap seemed a bit awkward at first, but now that I'm used to it, I find that it's actually quite convenient, fast, and intuitive.
I know it has been said over and over again that the A2 is, above all, a useful light, and I have to agree with that. It's not a wow-light, and I wasn't much impressed at first, but it grew on me. I didn't really think it would, but it did. Probably that's because I finally started using it for real instead of just playing around with it.
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So that's it really. I'll just add a couple of other occasions when the A2 has been useful to me. One time (this was the day I first got it) my wife & I were going to visit a couple of friends. They live in a blockhouse, which has a stairwell that is kept locked at all times. Approaching the door, we realized that we'd both left our cell phones home, so we couldn't let them know we were there. My wife was upset that we'd have to walk back home to get them and then back to our friends' place again. Wait a moment, I said, let me try something. So I took out the A2 and I shone the incan beam at their windows a couple of times, and sure enough, they noticed and came down to let us in. Problem solved.
The other time we were driving to visit relatives, when we had to stop in the middle of nowhere to fill up the car's window washer's tank. It wasn't raining, but the roads were wet and other cars would throw up a lot of dirt in their wake, so we had to use the washer almost constantly. Lucky we had a new canister of washing liquid in the trunk. Anyway, this was in november with no snow on the ground yet, and pretty late at night with an overcast sky, so it was as dark as it can ever get outdoors. Naturally, I took the opportunity to shine my lights around a bit. With ambient light around the A2's LED beam often looks rather anemic, but when it's really, really dark, it's amazing how far it can throw! It easily lit up trees on the other side of the road, and including the ditch, that must have been about 20 meters or so. Ok so it didn't light them up brightly, but I was impressed all the same.
My wife and I currently live in a nice apartment. I has been just right for us, but now we have a son, who, it appears, isn't getting any smaller, so sooner or later we are probably going to get a bit crowded. So we are looking for a house (and also because my wife wants a garden to toil in). We are not in any hurry, but we go and take a look every time a promising one turns up for sale at a not-quite-exorbitant price. I find I actually like doing this, since it's always interesting to see different kinds of houses. Besides, it provides a really good reason to peer under roofs & foundations and into all the dark corners and crevices that a house has, without the fear of getting arrested. We went to see a couple of houses today, and as we were leaving, my wife actually asked me to take a flashlight along. No problem, dear! (I already had three, but let's not tell her that.)
So. Almost every time I go take a look into a dark basement or under the foundation there's some couple there saying "we should have brought a flashlight" to each other. Naturally, I'm the only one who ever does. But since – for some unfathomable reason – no-one else ever does bring a flashlight to these house exhibitions (is there a proper term for this in English?) I'd feel a bit self-conscious carrying a big, really powerful light around, especially at summer, but the A2 is perfect for this purpose, since it's small and inconspicuous. Sure, there are other lights that fit that criteria, but the A2 has certain other advantages as well. I'm sure you all know all about it's LEDs and regulated incan beam, so I won't bore you with the specs. If you don't, go read JS's erudite and unabridged A2 thread.
The LEDs are perfectly sufficient for looking into closets, small storage spaces, just seeing the lay-outs of rooms etc. But the cool thing is that with the LEDs, you don't really have to point the light at anything, they just provide a sort of area illumination. If you have a beam with a hotspot, you have to point it at something and then your eyes (and everyone else's) tend to follow the hotspot. Yeah, sure, you can do the ceiling bounce, but I find many people look at you funny, if you point a flashlight at the ceiling, when you are not actually looking at the ceiling.
And the incan beam? I find it provides just the right amount of light to be useful without being blinding or insufficient. Yes, the color rendition is a thing of beauty and has helped me to spot a number of rotting or moldy ceiling or floor beams, but the thing I'm most impressed with it is how it never hurts to look at the beam. The incan beam is directional, of course, but it doesn't have a small, really bright hotspot. Instead, it has a fairly large and smooth (dare I say diffuse) bright, well, "hotarea". You can tell it's bright by the way it throws and lights things up, but even if you use it up close, it's never blinding or inconvenient. Not in the way a tight hotspot is. For example, the UKE 4AA will out-throw the A2 even with its 2W bulb, but the tradeoff to that ability is that close up, the UKE's hotspot is tiny and too bright to look at directly. Not so with the A2. It just lights things up and does it beautifully and pleasantly. It's a joy to use at any distance.
The two-stage tailcap seemed a bit awkward at first, but now that I'm used to it, I find that it's actually quite convenient, fast, and intuitive.
I know it has been said over and over again that the A2 is, above all, a useful light, and I have to agree with that. It's not a wow-light, and I wasn't much impressed at first, but it grew on me. I didn't really think it would, but it did. Probably that's because I finally started using it for real instead of just playing around with it.
-----------
So that's it really. I'll just add a couple of other occasions when the A2 has been useful to me. One time (this was the day I first got it) my wife & I were going to visit a couple of friends. They live in a blockhouse, which has a stairwell that is kept locked at all times. Approaching the door, we realized that we'd both left our cell phones home, so we couldn't let them know we were there. My wife was upset that we'd have to walk back home to get them and then back to our friends' place again. Wait a moment, I said, let me try something. So I took out the A2 and I shone the incan beam at their windows a couple of times, and sure enough, they noticed and came down to let us in. Problem solved.
The other time we were driving to visit relatives, when we had to stop in the middle of nowhere to fill up the car's window washer's tank. It wasn't raining, but the roads were wet and other cars would throw up a lot of dirt in their wake, so we had to use the washer almost constantly. Lucky we had a new canister of washing liquid in the trunk. Anyway, this was in november with no snow on the ground yet, and pretty late at night with an overcast sky, so it was as dark as it can ever get outdoors. Naturally, I took the opportunity to shine my lights around a bit. With ambient light around the A2's LED beam often looks rather anemic, but when it's really, really dark, it's amazing how far it can throw! It easily lit up trees on the other side of the road, and including the ditch, that must have been about 20 meters or so. Ok so it didn't light them up brightly, but I was impressed all the same.
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