D
**DONOTDELETE**
Guest
Enrolling the dogs in Seeing Eye School - $17,000
One pair of Stevie Wonder glasses - $360
Blinded by your very own Lambda Hydra XP4 - priceless
Well, I got it in the mail yesterday and in between packing and addressing and mailing tailcap switches and running around catching up on the wife's honey-do's plus getting set to attend my daughter's end-of-school program, I managed to actually get some testing done.
I ran it through my MeterMan® LM631 light meter and did both direct beam measurement and reflected light from the ceiling. And each test was duplicated against ElektroLumens' DirectDrive 2D/3C Blaster mod, which is incredibly bright in its own right.
The Hydra is on the right:
There is actually not much green in the beams themselves, neither the Hydra nor the Blaster. It's just how my camera picked up the light coloring -- could be the green fabric of the La-Z-Boy I have the lights resting on!
At extremely close range (we're talking a ½-inch here) there is a seemingly slightly larger spot from the single LS Blaster as opposed to four smaller ones from the Hydra, but upon closer inspection you will notice the LS in the Blaster is set down further into the bottom of the reflector, while the Hydra's four LS leds are right against the front lens. Thus the Hydra's leds are only that ½-inch away but the ElektroLumens' single LS is actually another ¾-inch further back:
But never mind the beamshots, what everyone really wants to know is, "How bright is it?"
To the naked eye, shining it around through the trees in the dark valley behind my house, it seems about twice as bright as the Blaster, perhaps even slightly less. But it is clearly brighter.
But how bright? Come with me now as we sally forth to the light meter...
Comparison Method 1: shine each light directly onto the sensor disk from a measured twelve inches away. No angle of deviation, no nothing. Straight dead-on, we want to burn out the eye of the meter if we can. The "Peak Hold" setting is used, meaning the absolute brightest reading is held onto, even if the flashlight moves around so that a dimmer portion of the beam hits the sensor. The reading only changes if a brighter part of the beam bumps the reading upward.
The ElektroLumens Blaster registered a Peak Lux reading of - 3,680
The Lambda Hydra XP4 registered a Peak Lux reading of - 7,270
So the Hydra is about twice as bright, despite having four times as many leds.
But this is up close, with the beam hitting the sensor squarely. What if those four LS beams are giving the Hydra an advantage? What about those scientific labs where they have an Integrating Sphere which captures and measures ALL the light emitted by a certain device? Certainly that is a more accurate comparison, and few would doubt such a premise.
But I do not have access to such a sphere.
I do, however, have access to an...Integrating Ceiling!
That's right folks, in MR Bulk's™ warped and twisted mind, I figured that light cast from a fixed distance upon a flat white surface, and pointed at the same spot on that surface, and the reflection from which is then measured by a light meter also at a fixed distance, would gain fair, comparable, and repeatable measurements in order to put up a couple of lights against each other.
Comparison Method 2: and so it was into my pitch black testing (and sometimes laundry) room, slide the door shut, turn on the MeterMan light meter, set it to the "lux" reading calculated out to one-tenth lux for greater accuracy since we would be measuring much dimmer reflected light, place the sensor face up on the washing machine (we are a highly respected scientific facility here at the MR Bulk™ Institute of Flashlightology), and, utilizing our high-tech Integrating Ceiling, I hold up and turn on each light one at a time next to my ear, with each lens perfectly level with the top of my head, and each light aimed at the exact same spot on the flat white ceiling.
Results:
Blaster - 6.3 peak lux
Hydra - 11.7 peak lux
So it is still about double the output.
I like this custom-made $200+ light. Not only is it one of just a very few in existence, and not only does it represent, at least at this brief splitsecond moment in LED flashlight history, the absolute brightest handheld LED flashlight in the world...it also is gonna make one helluva good whackin' tool -- as I may have the opportunity to find out as early as tonight, when I return to work...
Thanks Kevin, you Da Man.
One pair of Stevie Wonder glasses - $360
Blinded by your very own Lambda Hydra XP4 - priceless
Well, I got it in the mail yesterday and in between packing and addressing and mailing tailcap switches and running around catching up on the wife's honey-do's plus getting set to attend my daughter's end-of-school program, I managed to actually get some testing done.
I ran it through my MeterMan® LM631 light meter and did both direct beam measurement and reflected light from the ceiling. And each test was duplicated against ElektroLumens' DirectDrive 2D/3C Blaster mod, which is incredibly bright in its own right.
The Hydra is on the right:
There is actually not much green in the beams themselves, neither the Hydra nor the Blaster. It's just how my camera picked up the light coloring -- could be the green fabric of the La-Z-Boy I have the lights resting on!
At extremely close range (we're talking a ½-inch here) there is a seemingly slightly larger spot from the single LS Blaster as opposed to four smaller ones from the Hydra, but upon closer inspection you will notice the LS in the Blaster is set down further into the bottom of the reflector, while the Hydra's four LS leds are right against the front lens. Thus the Hydra's leds are only that ½-inch away but the ElektroLumens' single LS is actually another ¾-inch further back:
But never mind the beamshots, what everyone really wants to know is, "How bright is it?"
To the naked eye, shining it around through the trees in the dark valley behind my house, it seems about twice as bright as the Blaster, perhaps even slightly less. But it is clearly brighter.
But how bright? Come with me now as we sally forth to the light meter...
Comparison Method 1: shine each light directly onto the sensor disk from a measured twelve inches away. No angle of deviation, no nothing. Straight dead-on, we want to burn out the eye of the meter if we can. The "Peak Hold" setting is used, meaning the absolute brightest reading is held onto, even if the flashlight moves around so that a dimmer portion of the beam hits the sensor. The reading only changes if a brighter part of the beam bumps the reading upward.
The ElektroLumens Blaster registered a Peak Lux reading of - 3,680
The Lambda Hydra XP4 registered a Peak Lux reading of - 7,270
So the Hydra is about twice as bright, despite having four times as many leds.
But this is up close, with the beam hitting the sensor squarely. What if those four LS beams are giving the Hydra an advantage? What about those scientific labs where they have an Integrating Sphere which captures and measures ALL the light emitted by a certain device? Certainly that is a more accurate comparison, and few would doubt such a premise.
But I do not have access to such a sphere.
I do, however, have access to an...Integrating Ceiling!
That's right folks, in MR Bulk's™ warped and twisted mind, I figured that light cast from a fixed distance upon a flat white surface, and pointed at the same spot on that surface, and the reflection from which is then measured by a light meter also at a fixed distance, would gain fair, comparable, and repeatable measurements in order to put up a couple of lights against each other.
Comparison Method 2: and so it was into my pitch black testing (and sometimes laundry) room, slide the door shut, turn on the MeterMan light meter, set it to the "lux" reading calculated out to one-tenth lux for greater accuracy since we would be measuring much dimmer reflected light, place the sensor face up on the washing machine (we are a highly respected scientific facility here at the MR Bulk™ Institute of Flashlightology), and, utilizing our high-tech Integrating Ceiling, I hold up and turn on each light one at a time next to my ear, with each lens perfectly level with the top of my head, and each light aimed at the exact same spot on the flat white ceiling.
Results:
Blaster - 6.3 peak lux
Hydra - 11.7 peak lux
So it is still about double the output.
I like this custom-made $200+ light. Not only is it one of just a very few in existence, and not only does it represent, at least at this brief splitsecond moment in LED flashlight history, the absolute brightest handheld LED flashlight in the world...it also is gonna make one helluva good whackin' tool -- as I may have the opportunity to find out as early as tonight, when I return to work...
Thanks Kevin, you Da Man.
