Beamshots Baby Beamshots !!!

For your Christmas Day viewing edification i submit to you the following beamshots.

All beamshots were taken at a distance of 30 feet to target. I used an Olympus C-5050 Digital camera set to "Auto" everything.

All photos were taking within 15 minutes of each other and all flashlights had fresh batteries. The 123A lithium torches were all loaded with Surefires batteries.

The AA torches were all loaded with PowerEx 2500 mAh NiMH batteries fresh off the charger. The AAA torches were all loaded with Energizer Alkalines.

Photos will be shown in order of flashlight display going Left to Right. Both Fenix torches will be shows with low/high mod using a standard 10ohm 5% resistor.

The Players (2 incandescents, 8 LEDS)





First up are the 2 incandescent torches:

Pila GL4


Surefire 9P


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Next up are the various LED torches:

Streamlight Twintask 2L (Low)


Streamlight Twintask 2L (High)


Fenix L2P (Low)


Fenix L2P (High)


Fenix L1P (Low) - nothing to see here, move along....


Fenix L1P (High)


Sams Club Element


Dorcy Metal Gear


Streamlight ProPolymer 4AA Luxeon


Surefire U2 Ultra - Lowest to Highest Settings (1)


Surefire U2 Ultra - Lowest to Highest Settings (2)


Surefire U2 Ultra - Lowest to Highest Settings (3)


Surefire U2 Ultra - Lowest to Highest Settings (4)


Surefire U2 Ultra - Lowest to Highest Settings (5)


Surefire U2 Ultra - Lowest to Highest Settings (6)


Surefire L2 (Low)


Surefire L2 (High)


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And Finally...although not in the picture at the top is the AmiLite


Enjoy!!!

Very nice. Thanks for taking the time to take them & post them here.

you shouldn't use "auto" for beamshot..but thanks

cool shots. Thanks for the pictures. I feel better about Xmas.:wow: :thanks:

nice beamshots... could you please list them from brightest to least brightest... thanks. Also, Which do you prefer?

-David

tvbi said:

you shouldn't use "auto" for beamshot..but thanks

Click to expand...

Please disregard the post above ^ as i do not see him posting anybeamshots.. I Think you did a very good job and i thank you very much..It is good enough to be a deciding factor for many people i'm sure..
Thanks again
Mike.....

gl22man said:

Please disregard the post above ^ as i do not see him posting anybeamshots.. I Think you did a very good job and i thank you very much..It is good enough to be a deciding factor for many people i'm sure..
Thanks again
Mike.....

Click to expand...

I was just trying to help...but what do I know..I haven't post any beamshot.

tvbi said:

you shouldn't use "auto" for beamshot..but thanks

Click to expand...

I'm not a photographer and as such thought i did a pretty good job at the beamshots. It certainly gives anyone thinking about these lights a decent idea about how they perform against other lights.

I'm not sure how to take your one sentence comment about my post but if you would be so kind as to elaborate a bit more instead of just telling me why "auto" is a bad idea maybe i'd learn something. Otherwise your post was seemingly void of any information. :shrug:

For everyone else who's posted, thanks for the nice words. :wave:

Sorry about my super informative comment I wasn't saying your beamshots was bad, just that it could be just "little" bit more accurate by using manual exposure setting so every shot has the same setting.

When you use "auto" mode, the camera would use different exposure setting for each of the shot because of the amount of light given out by different light is..different (like having a slower shutter speed to let more light in when you try to take the L1P on the low setting..there for making it a little bit brighter or having a faster speed for a Surefire because the camera sense too much light is coming in). Look at the orange light from the house on the left, do you see it has different brightness on every picture? That's all..

Auto basically acts like a 'normalizer' since it adjusts the shutter speed,iso or aperature based on the center weighted average levels. Under some conditions a 600lu light and a 50lum light can appear equal under auto settings.


To get the best beamshots set every thing manually (use the settings from auto for baseline) and keep the settings the same all lights


You auto seemed pretty accurate though. Good job anyhow

I'll do some research and read up on my camera and see about taking another round in "manual" mode. I definantly see the light from the house on the left is a different color in most of the pictures. However, i'd like to point out that from my point of view taking the pictures they are pretty much accurate as they were to my naked eye when taking the pictures. But i agree that "manual" mode for all exposures would be the best approach. It just requires reading and more planning on my part next time. :laughing: :thinking:

streamlight propolymer is some bright stuff.

-David

No offense, but the previous poster is right about not using auto mode, especially for beamshots in the dark. I'm surprised there is as much difference between the shots as there is (it's cool that it worked though!). The problem is that the camera will base it's settings based on the brightness of the lights (decreasing exposure for bright lights and increasing them for dimmer ones) because there is no other ambient light. If you figure out the manual settings of your camera, set it manually to a setting (aperture and shutter speed) that renders your brightest light to what you see with you own eyes (as close as you can anyway), then leave those settings for the rest of the photos. You will end up with a more accurate comparison that way. White balance can be a real pain with beamshots so I won't even get into that...

After looking at your photos again, they sure don't look like they were taken on "full auto". I guess it depends on your camera. I know that with my setup, if I took those dim shots, I would end up with a 30" exposure that would make the whole photo look like it was taken at dusk. I tried to check the exif info on your photos for camera settings but was unsuccessful (this is sometimes lost depending on how it was resized)...

I think everybody is right.

Not a camera guy here but for absolute perfection I've heard that manual/daylight is best for a beamshot. Then I see guys dial down the shutter speed to more dramatically show beam differences.

However shots like these are useful because they somewhat simulate the (what someone referred to recently) brain's photolab.

We might call these shots empirical? I have only two of the torches in these shots and they were fairly close to what I see.

Anytime someone posts beamshots I'm appreciative for the effort and not always but usually find them to be useful. In this case they are useful.

Eh, so maybe i jumped the gun a little, but do you realize how much time and effort it takes to take so many beam shots?? Your one liner kinda struck a nerve with me especially since this guy took the time and effort to do this on Christmas of all days. But i guess i may have took it the wrong way so sorry if i was out of line.
I still say nice beam shots and thanks for putting the effort into it even if Everyone dosen't appreciate, it most do..
Mike.....

Just to say nice beam shots - I found them useful.
Its virtually impossible to get "accurate" results even with your eyes. If you use a bright light your eyes will adjust then if you use a dim light after it will seem dimmer than if you just used the dim one first!!

I found the shots useful together with your comment that your eye comparison showed the same results.

Nice shots. Thanks

:thumbsup:

For best comparisons, it is probably best to use all manual settings. Those will depend upon your camera though. For outdoor shots, I like to use 28mm, f2.8 and 1 second shutter. Even using manual settings, it is important to always use the exact same 'zoom' setting as most digital camera apetures will vary based on the mm setting. And a tripod is very handy though your pics look great as far as stability and lack of blur). And just pick any balance setting as long as you keep it consistant. Daylight or cloudy would be my suggestions.

Having said that, my personal reference is a blue minibarn about 52 feet. I've compared my cameras using auto and manual and with outdoor shots, there really ins't a huge difference between them. Indoor shots at 1 ft or 1 meter will look radically different based on auto vs manual settings.

Either way, thanks for taking the time to set up the shots, take them, host them and post them. It is a bit of work. The more beamshots we have to compare, the better decisions we can all make.

The beamshots were appreciated and a nicely done comparison.
You have some nice torches.
Also the posters that suggested to keep it on manual mode were correct and being constructive. But your auto mode looks like it did pretty good job.

After that being said, I'm really looking forward to receiving a L1P soon and your comparison shot shows that it is really a quite bright torch for a 1xAA and now my enthusiam has risen even higher.