Don't all cities and towns have "outdoors?"

KingGlamis · Oct 6, 2007

Semi-rant here. It just amazes me when I read people's post such as:

"I haven't had a chance to take my light outside at night yet."

WHAT? How hard is it to walk outside of your house and shine your light in the dark?

I mean seriously, I don't care where you live, it gets dark outside every night. So why haven't you tried your new light outside yet? Holy cow people, that's the first thing I do after buying a light... I wait for nightfall and then go play with my new light outside.

Some people have even posted that they have had their new light for two weeks or more and still haven't had a chance to shine it outside.

WHAT? HELLO! You CANNOT possibly have a life that is SO busy that you can't walk outside for a few minutes to see how bright your light is.

And as a side note... All of you that take the time to get good "white wall" beam shots... why not do outside tree shots? Outdoor beam shots are ten million times more useful to all of us than white wall shots.

White wallers, step outside the house once in a while and use your light for what it was meant for... lighting up more than a white wall. :thumbsup:

chalshus · Oct 7, 2007

Shoudnt you be outside with a light now?

LukeA · Oct 7, 2007

KingGlamis said:
Semi-rant here. It just amazes me when I read people's post such as:

"I haven't had a chance to take my light outside at night yet."

WHAT? How hard is it to walk outside of your house and shine your light in the dark?

I mean seriously, I don't care where you live, it gets dark outside every night. So why haven't you tried your new light outside yet? Holy cow people, that's the first thing I do after buying a light... I wait for nightfall and then go play with my new light outside.

Some people have even posted that they have had their new light for two weeks or more and still haven't had a chance to shine it outside.

WHAT? HELLO! You CANNOT possibly have a life that is SO busy that you can't walk outside for a few minutes to see how bright your light is.

And as a side note... All of you that take the time to get good "white wall" beam shots... why not do outside tree shots? Outdoor beam shots are ten million times more useful to all of us than white wall shots.

White wallers, step outside the house once in a while and use your light for what it was meant for... lighting up more than a white wall. :thumbsup:

Many people, myself included, live on streets with streetlights. This makes it somewhat more difficult to do that sort of thing.

Marduke · Oct 7, 2007

Or in apartment complexes surrounded with street lights. Shining lights across neighbor's apartment windows will get you a visit from the local security guard btw... Don't ask....

:shakehead

skalomax · Oct 7, 2007

LukeA said:
Many people, myself included, live on streets with streetlights. This makes it somewhat more difficult to to that sort of thing.

Same Here, I reside In Southern California.

All the bright ambient light illuminates everything here already.:sick2:

Culhain · Oct 7, 2007

Darkness? After dark?

I'm old enough to remember true nighttime darkness. Those were the good old days, err nights.

I work second shift and about one fourth of my shift is spent outdoors. Because of extensive outdoor lighting, it is actually darker indoors.

Walking home from work (about 3.5 miles), I notice that there are very few areas where there is not enough ambient light to read by.

When I want to compare flashlights, I head to an underground part of the building, turn off what lights I can and stay away from the always on EXIT lights.

UncleFester · Oct 7, 2007

I ain't EVEN gonna share my thoughts in this thread.. LOL

Daekar · Oct 7, 2007

Yes, I know what you mean, having to go inside for darkness. The nearby university and surrounding apartment complexes form what I refer to as "light pollution hell," where this is NO place with true darkness. I can't see the Milkyway (or 90% of the stars regularly in the sky, for that matter) unless I take a 20 minute drive to get away from the light - and even then, the sky is filled with the scatter once you get to about 45 degrees of elevation from the horizon. A 90 degree cone of semi-dark sky just isn't night to me, not after seeing the beautiful stars while night-sailing or camping in the middle of nowhere. I can't wait to move to the country...

Scott Packard · Oct 7, 2007

Here's a pic of the streetlights in the city next to ours, where I walk at night:
http://www.vintagelightbulbs.com/pasadenaacorn.jpg

They don't throw out much light at all, especially when equipped with incandescent bulbs.

lctorana · Oct 7, 2007

WHAT? How hard is it to walk outside of your house and shine your light in the dark?

Harder than you might think.

A lot of our forum members would live in high-rise apartments, where you ony go outside to go somewhere.

A private backyard is beyond the reach of many.

PhantomPhoton · Oct 7, 2007

Marduke said:
Or in apartment complexes surrounded with street lights. Shining lights across neighbor's apartment windows will get you a visit from the local security guard btw... Don't ask.... :shakehead

ditto
Apartments are not the ideal testing ground for powerful flashlights (**** off the neighbors) nor are they an ideal testing ground for smaller edc flashlights (too much light pollution).
Beyond that some places aren't very nice to stand outside sometimes. It rains here every once in awhile usually at the wonderful temperature of mid 50's (F). So extended tests and beamshots are out as well as walking down to local parks or schoolyards. (Which in my city close at dusk anyway)

lightemup · Oct 7, 2007

KingGlamis, you seem to like a good rant don't you

When I was in the US I met someone that basically lived in a 5 block radius. He lived in NYC, and he couldn't remember the last time he left the city. As I remember it NYC was pretty well lit even at night. I didn't really go to Central Park at night, but i'm guessing it has pretty good lighting too at least along the paths. I'd also feel a little awkward / weird etc standing on Madison Avenue and shining a torch down the street if there were other people around. This coupled with ambient lighting in cities could delay a good outdoor beamshot testing a bit

If people finish work and get home late then they could just be taking it easy at home, or catching up on things they need to do. As has been mentioned a lot of people live in units, which make things more difficult. What if someone is a white wall hunter? Does that make them any less worthy hey hey hey

Jokes aside it took me about a month to get the time to find a spot that really gave me justice in trying out the beam on my M6. So I suppose I fall under the jurisdiction of your rant

Twellmann · Oct 7, 2007

I haven't had a dark night all summer, but then again I'm living at the Thule Air Base. The sun is setting now though, in about a month it'll stay down for a couple of months.

Nitro · Oct 7, 2007

lctorana said:
WHAT? How hard is it to walk outside of your house and shine your light in the dark?

Harder than you might think.

A lot of our forum members would live in high-rise apartments, where you ony go outside to go somewhere.

A private backyard is beyond the reach of many.

I'd love to take my MaxaBeam up in a high rise. :devil:

Bushman5 · Oct 7, 2007

KingGlamis said:
Semi-rant here. It just amazes me when I read people's post such as:

"I haven't had a chance to take my light outside at night yet."

WHAT? How hard is it to walk outside of your house and shine your light in the dark?

I mean seriously, I don't care where you live, it gets dark outside every night. So why haven't you tried your new light outside yet? Holy cow people, that's the first thing I do after buying a light... I wait for nightfall and then go play with my new light outside.

Some people have even posted that they have had their new light for two weeks or more and still haven't had a chance to shine it outside.

WHAT? HELLO! You CANNOT possibly have a life that is SO busy that you can't walk outside for a few minutes to see how bright your light is.

And as a side note... All of you that take the time to get good "white wall" beam shots... why not do outside tree shots? Outdoor beam shots are ten million times more useful to all of us than white wall shots.

White wallers, step outside the house once in a while and use your light for what it was meant for... lighting up more than a white wall. :thumbsup:

well, thanks to a city that has 4 street;lights per block (on each side) there is no darkness anymore. I dont even need a flashlight in the city really. We have so much light poluttion here that even when i'm in the mountians 500 KM away you can see the glow from the city. You can read a book with small print here at night.

not everyone lives in a small town with few lights.

KingGlamis · Oct 7, 2007

You guys make good points. Guess I'm lucky that I go camping often. But even where I live, there is tons of ambient light but I don't care, I still take beam shots. Couple of examples where you can see lots of light pollution.

MikeSalt · Oct 7, 2007

I know the feeling of not being able to go out to test the flashlights. I live in a suburban area, so wherever I point a half-decent flashlight, it always ends up spilling out onto someone's window. No complaints yet though.

Bushman5 · Oct 7, 2007

just to give you an example...i cant see any stars (maybe 50 or so) from the city. Yet when i go 1000kms away form the major areas, i can see billions of nighttime stars , the Milky way, shooting stars etc.

i took a city dweller to the country in the summer. She was utterly overcome with emotion when she saw all the stars. She was actually crying, she had NEVER seen anything like it, and we are talking just the basic night sky. A lot of people in cities are like this, they wave never seen REAL night or real ngiht skies.

here is a light pollution site:

http://www.lightpollution.it/dmsp/

this one shows the same galaxy, from different areas of the country:

http://www.astropix.com/HTML/H_OTHER/SATPOL1.HTM

SAT view of CONUS (canada/Mexico/USA/Alaska/Greenland:

http://www.astronomy.org/StarWatch/November/11-01-NA-light-pollution.jpg

Illum · Oct 7, 2007

theoretically since streetlights have photometers you can turn them off just by shining something like a 1CMP or equivalent halogen based light at it right?
when under light pollution...especially under sodium lamps and their horrible tint flashlights don't really look anyway like how they're supposed to look like. Luckily the house in under a canopy, and since the area was once an agricultural site, many of the old oaks and pine are preserved, giving me a perfectly dark medium to play with lights:huh:

light pollution:sick2:

Bushman5 · Oct 7, 2007

^ you can, but you need to be ABOVE the lamphead to do so, thats where the sensors are.

Don't all cities and towns have "outdoors?"

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