Fallingwater
Flashlight Enthusiast
Remember when you weren't into lights? (aka: the "wish I'd had a light" thread)
There are a lot of "share your good flashlight moments" threads, and most of us poke fun or raise our eyes at people who are caught light-less in the moment of need.
However, not all of us were born with a distinct fascination for lighting (I say "not all" because I'm fairly convinced some people here were born with Surefires in their hands
), and before the light bug bit us we too must have had moments when we wished we had a flashlight handy but didn't, or a better flashlight than what we had.
So let's share those stories instead.
I'll start...
A year or so after reading this review of a Shakelight Nightstar I found one of those horrendous clones at a town market for about €2, and bought it out of curiosity.
I lucked out, as it was a true shake-powered, capacitor-equipped light (as opposed to the coin-button-powered fakes that usually get sold in such places instead). It was, of course, very dim, but at the time I was one of the unenlightened, so I didn't much care.
I found I had little use for it at home, so I stuffed it in the glove compartment of my car thinking "some light is better than no light" and forgot about it.
Fast forward a few months, and I'm invited by some friends to a new year's party they're holding at a house in the mountains. It had just snowed, and I'd never driven on snowy mountain roads (quite an adventure that was, but that's a story for another time), so I went to a car store to get some snow chains in case the snow proved too thick for the bare tires.
The guy didn't know what kind of chains was needed for my tires, and I didn't have the car's manual with me (stupid, I know), so we went out to look at the tires.
It was evening, the parking lot had no lighting and the lettering on tires isn't exactly easy to read even with decent light, so I thought of the shake-flashlight I had in the glove compartment, took it out, gave it some vigorous shaking and pointed it at the tire.
We were juuust able to make out the letters by almost making the light touch the tires, and in the end after about five minutes of muffled swearing and lots of shaking finally determined what tires my car had.
It was then that I realized embarking on a car trip in the snow with that piece of junk as the only source of independent light was utterly insane. I couldn't get anything really good right then, and the shops were about to close, so I got in the nearest electronics store and bought the best they had... which was an incandescent 2C flashlight made of plastic, not very bright and with an irregular beam, but still a far cry from the shake-light.
The next lights I got were a few LED-honeycomb chinese cheapies, which still weren't great but better than the incandescent, and then a Fenix L1S. After that I went on to Crees, and now here I am.
There are a lot of "share your good flashlight moments" threads, and most of us poke fun or raise our eyes at people who are caught light-less in the moment of need.
However, not all of us were born with a distinct fascination for lighting (I say "not all" because I'm fairly convinced some people here were born with Surefires in their hands
), and before the light bug bit us we too must have had moments when we wished we had a flashlight handy but didn't, or a better flashlight than what we had.So let's share those stories instead.
I'll start...
A year or so after reading this review of a Shakelight Nightstar I found one of those horrendous clones at a town market for about €2, and bought it out of curiosity.
I lucked out, as it was a true shake-powered, capacitor-equipped light (as opposed to the coin-button-powered fakes that usually get sold in such places instead). It was, of course, very dim, but at the time I was one of the unenlightened, so I didn't much care.
I found I had little use for it at home, so I stuffed it in the glove compartment of my car thinking "some light is better than no light" and forgot about it.
Fast forward a few months, and I'm invited by some friends to a new year's party they're holding at a house in the mountains. It had just snowed, and I'd never driven on snowy mountain roads (quite an adventure that was, but that's a story for another time), so I went to a car store to get some snow chains in case the snow proved too thick for the bare tires.
The guy didn't know what kind of chains was needed for my tires, and I didn't have the car's manual with me (stupid, I know), so we went out to look at the tires.
It was evening, the parking lot had no lighting and the lettering on tires isn't exactly easy to read even with decent light, so I thought of the shake-flashlight I had in the glove compartment, took it out, gave it some vigorous shaking and pointed it at the tire.
We were juuust able to make out the letters by almost making the light touch the tires, and in the end after about five minutes of muffled swearing and lots of shaking finally determined what tires my car had.
It was then that I realized embarking on a car trip in the snow with that piece of junk as the only source of independent light was utterly insane. I couldn't get anything really good right then, and the shops were about to close, so I got in the nearest electronics store and bought the best they had... which was an incandescent 2C flashlight made of plastic, not very bright and with an irregular beam, but still a far cry from the shake-light.
The next lights I got were a few LED-honeycomb chinese cheapies, which still weren't great but better than the incandescent, and then a Fenix L1S. After that I went on to Crees, and now here I am.
