The best thrower=the best blinding flashlight ?

post tenebras

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A laser is a better tool than a flashlight to blind someone. :nana:

If it has to be a flashlight, you probably want a strong UV, not a "thrower," per se.:twak:
 

Juggernaut

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Please, can everybody keep this as a none self defense thread, the DM will close it because there are like 1,453,897 of them:ohgeez:.

Well theoretically, to blind someone the more intense the light is the more effective it would be, normally people just think about having more lumens when they want more "blinding power" but in actuality the intensity in Lux "if we are ignoring UV rays to literally blind people and Inferred waves to set them on fire, We are talking about None Lethal use, no playing dirty." Then yes, a simple white light output will blind more readily with higher lux. The important thing to remember Is if you pictured a flashlight as a gun "This has nothing to do with self defense, I'm just making a comparison" most lights such as from SF are like shotguns were they may have 6,000 lux "6P, 9P" your really don't have to aim them to hit a persons face, while a more dedicated thrower "like a A9 will have 19,000 lux, but it's beam would take more time to line up with their face." Of course you could get something like a LF EO-13 or M21 light and have 20,000+ Lux and still have a broad beam. Though one has to wonder if the more intensity of a light creates a longer laps of disrupted vision, something like a DEFT's 128,000 lux should be devastating:faint:! There is only one other variable which is when testing light's blinding ability on my self, I have found that lights with Mop or Orange peal blind the easiest, I'm not sure why, but the reflectors imperfections seems to allow the entire surface to be equally intense when viewing from veering angles from the receiving end. While smooth reflectored lights seem to have dark spots and aren't equally useful unless viewed from directly on:shrug:.
 

AnAppleSnail

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Even my cheapie X2000 flood-to-throw (3xAAA direct-driving a Cree P4 guess-bin behind an aspheric zoom lens) does a pretty good blinder when I zoom it in. If you put 80-110 lumens otf in someone's eyes they won't see for a bit. The problems here are getting light in their iris and aiming the bright throw zone at their eyes. In the dark any light will blind. Grab the mythical FourSevens tiny MC-E coming soon and you won't go far wrong. If you want to incapacitate people at thrower ranges, I'd ask why...but get a ton of light behind a zooming aspheric and you can't go far wrong.
 

MrGman

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Everything is in the title :thumbsup:

the short answer is yes. A high intensity narrow beam has more blinding effect than a wide beam with less intensity even if it has more total lumens of light. However the narrower the beam the more careful you have to aim it to achieve you objective as one poster above was trying to discuss. If you truly have to blind more than one person and they are not standing side by side, then this narrow light beam of light may be a detriment and not an asset.

We can all stand in a room and turn on a 100 watt light or a 200 watt light or a lot more with probably a few thousand lumens in the room, but because its spread out over the entire ceiling (aka an office filled with 4 foot long 40 watt each fluorescents) none of us are "blinded" by it.

putting 20K lux in somebodies eyes directly is going to have a much more serious blinding effect.

No discussions as to motives and reasons behind doing it were made or implied.
 

saabluster

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I had both of the tank like Ultrafire 1300 models. One was a 7 P4 LED setup and the other a hotwire. I had my wife shine both of them in my face expressly to see if one was more blinding than the other. I had guessed that the LEDs would win as they seemed to put out more light but I can tell you that the incan hurt much much more than the LEDs. And the LEDs were no walk in the park. My eyes watered uncontrollably. Throw is definitely a factor but so are the wavelengths being sent into the eye.
 

WadeF

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It's all about the LUX. The higher the lux value, the brighter the light, the more it will bother someone's eyes. Lumens don't mean anything, as stated above.

Pictures may show this easier:

Malkoff M60 in a P60 host, ~ 200 lumens:


Dereelight DBS Q4 (old pic), ~200 lumens:


On my lux meter the Malkoff would be in the 6,000LUX range, the DBS in the 24,000LUX range (with the Q4, now I have an R2 and it's more around 28,000LUX, on my meter)

Which would you want to be hit in the eyes with? :p
 

jahxman

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Hmmm.

My subjective experience, from blinding myself with my own lights :whistle:
is that obviously, the more output the better, but even more important than that seems to be the size of the blown out region created on the retina, how well it is aimed into the eye, and also the color temp of the projected light.

AN important factor is the size of the light emitting area (i.e. big reflector or diffuser = bigger blind spots on the retina) and how far it was from you. Also critical is whether it was aimed accurately such that the brightest part of the light is projected against the fovea, which is the central part of your retina, and has the highest density of cone receptors in the eye. If your fovea goes to sleep all you have is peripheral vision left, and humans are not well designed to navigate that way (see macular degeneration.)

The bigger the light emitting surface, the more likely it is to hit the fovea, and make those cones and rods go to sleep for a while, or blow out completely.

So for my money, some of the most significant self-blinding has ocurred with my higher output floody lights, like the Malkoff M60 MC-Ew at close range, i.e. in my own hand. This light, because of the diffuser on the front, creates big blind spots in my vision if I even catch it from a side glance.

At further distances, I would think a well aimed aspheric would probably have the most effect; even though the bright spot is small at a distance, simply the amount of light entering the eye will probably do the trick.

The other thing I've noticed is that the warmer LEDs and incandescents seem to have more blinding effect, possibly because their spectrum has more impact on the cones in the fovea.

I would say that my most blinding light right now at close to medium range is probably my ROP, and at long range my DBS R2 aspheric.
 
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WadeF

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Have you tried looking into your DBS R2 aspheric at close range? It would probably be hard to do because once you approached the hot spot your eyes would have a natural reaction to close, look away, etc. You may find your other light more blinding because you can actually bare to look at it. If you could actually bare to look into the hot spot of your brighter lights, you may feel differently. :)

My DBS with a reflector projects a hot spot much larger than the pupil, even at 1 foot away, or closer, so it's all about how accurately you aim.
 

jahxman

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Have you tried looking into your DBS R2 aspheric at close range? It would probably be hard to do because once you approached the hot spot your eyes would have a natural reaction to close, look away, etc. You may find your other light more blinding because you can actually bare to look at it. If you could actually bare to look into the hot spot of your brighter lights, you may feel differently. :)

My DBS with a reflector projects a hot spot much larger than the pupil, even at 1 foot away, or closer, so it's all about how accurately you aim.

I agree if I looked straight into the R2 aspheric I would probably experience some permanent vision loss :mecry:

However, I don't agree about the size of the hotspot - it has nothing to do with whether it is bigger than the pupil or not. Most hotspots are.

Remember that the eye has a focosing lens at the front, which projects an image of what is out there onto the retina. The bigger it is out there, the bigger it is on the retina. The lens also concentrates whatever light does hit the pupil.

Obviously, if the pupil is dilated, like when the eye is adapted to dark, more of the light that is outside gets focused onto the retina. But the bigger the radiating surface of whatever gets focused, the the bigger the area that gets lit up on the retina - not the hotspot, but the size of the light source itself.

This is why even low power lasers can permanently damage the retina - their power actually gets multiplied by the focusing of the lens in the eye.
 

Databyter

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A cut n paste of part of something I posted yesterday,..

For blinding attackers, I don't know if anyone has ever made a thread about this but there are several factors in my personal experience. There are two basic factors at work.

Factor number 1 is pupil dilation which eliminates night vision especially in dark ambient light conditions. THis only lasts a few seconds to half a minute or so depending on ambient light conditions. A really bright light will dilate your eyes so much that it will take a while for the defensive reaction to relax.

Factor number 2 is creation of a lasting afterimage which inhibits vision for some period of time regardless of night vision or pupil dilation.

The afterimage will be worse and longer lasting the larger the pupils were open when exposed to bright light, so if you blind someone in the dark they will be more effected by afterimage than if you flashed them in the daytime. and of course it will be worse and longer lasting the brighter the light is. The afterimage of a very bright light especialy well aimed spot will pretty much completely blind a person for minutes.

Disclaimer: CPF Forums discourages purposeful aiming of lights into other peoples eyes. Informational purposes only.
 

hyperloop

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to be honest i find high output incand lights to be more painful to look at as there's heat involved, even the 15w, 7.4v drop in from DX hurts me more to look into than a 225 lumen Jetbeam Jet III at close range.

But on another note, the best "thrower" would be a boomerang shaped light that would come back to your hand once you hurled it away (lame i know but i couldnt resist)
 

I came to the light...

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No.

How can I say this when I've never defended myself with a flashlight? Well... while playing around with friends, I found that any high output flashlight's hotspot is at least enough to overwhelm night adapted vision, but the spill not incapacitating. While a hit with a thrower would give you more of an advantage, its smaller hotspot coupled with the adrenaline and motion of a tense situation may make you take too long aiming. A flashlight with a more spread out hotspot has enough blinding power to resolve a situation, and can be deployed more quickly.

That's assuming "blinding flashlight" means a flashlight used for blinding (attackers implied) - in a controlled environment, yes, concentrating a beam on the eyes makes it more blinding.
 
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sfca

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Lets revive this thread!


Which tint has the greatest blinding effect. ?

Ive heard of pure white tint besting blue tints,

Ive also heard of blue tints besting pure white tints

And Ive heard of warmer tints besting all.


From a standard 10 - 15ft out, lumens and lux being equal - which one ?
 

Lighthouse one

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I received one of the new Rebel Led 2 d cell Mag lights as a present. I have a mirror at 10 feet I always use to test blinding effects. Man, is this light ever strong! Total output is probably only low 100 lumens, but the tight beam is really potent!
 
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