Tell your testing secrets

[webley445]

Inspired by two recent threads. Saw folks describing how they test their lights out when they first get them and thought "wonder how everyone else does it?". That's one of the fun things I like about this forum. I love reading about different preferences and techniques. It gives me inspirations and good ideas to steal.

For me, I usually take a new light down to the garage with lights off for a "full dark" test. Then I take it with me when walking the dog for a "outdoors with ambient lighting and distance" test. Then I'll take it to work for a "under the desk/back of the drawer/ nook and cranny" test. All this also gives me a feel for handling under normal conditions. I will also try "full dark/outdoor+ambient/distance" tests using other lights for comparison. Oh, and can't forget the beam/spot comparison, performed solo and against other lights, trying though an assortment to compare it to equal/smaller/larger lights. Helps to find to nitch to classify it's performance.

 

[Chris M.]

A couple of my preferred uses:

1. Don`t turn any lights on in the house, while going to do stuff. Go get a drink (or any other simple thing to do) and just use the current under-test light. This also saves on the electricity bill (even though we have just about all flourescent lights here anyway)!

2. The weekly walk to the beer-shop. It`s about 15 minutes there and 20 back (as it`s uphill and I`m laden with beer!) and although there are streetlights, they are pitifully dim and far-spaced in places. 35 watt low pressure sodium with a diffuser full of muck doesn`t throw far. I have a hard time seeing in the dark anyway, so it also helps prevent me from tripping and dropping all that lovely beer...mmmmm, beeeeer......sorry.

Above and beyond that is my usual beam-target photo and light meter measurement, and an assortment of other things I do in the course of writing a review.

 

[jtivat]

The deck on my home over looks a large field that has a Church on the other side of it. The Church has a very large wall facing my home it is about 300 yards away. I use this wall to test my larger lights. There are also homes on the other side they probably wonder the heck is going on over here.

 

[Charles Bradshaw]

I live in a fairly conservative (way of doing things) residential neighborhood, so my outdoors test are limited to trash night (usually tuesday night). There is some ambient light, unless there is a power outage. So that gives me a chance to test lights in this setting and I can get an idea of performance in a zero ambient light, outdoor setting by this.

Indoors, there is the daylight nook and cranny, and fusebox tests. At night, with no lights on in the basement (where my computer is), I get a very good idea of how they light up things like sandstone fireplace and flat black utility bench. Plus the recroom ceiling is near white, so I can do tint comparisons.

Roy's runtime graphs help me further classify their ultimate purpose.

Between what I can do and Roy's graphs, I get a useful (to me) sorting of lights.