Question on Lumins . . .

How much is enough?Never mind, forget I asked that. How many are required to have enough light to work comfortably inside a PC case or other related tasks around the house? Power to light up a building at 300 yards is cool, but probably too much for some uses. In a multi level light, what would be considered a good general output level?

Hobbs said:

How much is enough?Never mind, forget I asked that. How many are required to have enough light to work comfortably inside a PC case or other related tasks around the house? Power to light up a building at 300 yards is cool, but probably too much for some uses. In a multi level light, what would be considered a good general output level?

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That is the beauty of multi level lights. You can have a low for walking around the house at night, a max for lighting up the house down the street and one or more mids for everything in between.

Generally 10 - 20 would be enough for inside a computer case or making your way around the house in darkness. Maybe even less.

My Lumi Raw NS on low is 20 lumens and it is more than enough for most close up things.

Mulit level is the way to go though. This is one of my problems with the TK11 I have, low mode is 64 lumens, which is too much in some situations.

to light up inside a pc case is 5-10 lumens. around the house is 0.1-20

It's also a question of how focused the beam is - 10 lumens can be too bright for close-up tasks from a high-lux 'thrower', but the same output in a wide floody beam (yielding low lux) can be quite subdued and usable.

Thanx for the info. Going to be a SF LX2 or Quark AA/2. Both will cover the high and low range. Leaning towards the Quark because my wife and I travel to some out of the way areas on adventure travel trips, and you can always get AAs. Anyone care to argue why I should avoid a AA light?

Yep, multi-level lights are the way to go. You can always take a high powered flashlight and turn it down if necessary, but it's really tough to take a low powered light and crank it up. (I've always said the same about subwoofers, another one of my hobbies, whenever the subject of large versus small subs comes up.)

Hobbs said:

Anyone care to argue why I should avoid a AA light?

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I *love* AA lights and I stick to them exclusively when it comes to lights that I travel with and EDC. A disadvantage to them is that they only put out 1.5 volts on average, which is half of what a typical CR123 cell puts out. Thus, to get equal power out of an AA light as a single CR123 light, it has to hold two batteries and thus it has to be much longer. That extra length doesn't bother me at all, but to some people that's a deal killer as far as the AA battery option is concerned.

Locoboy5150 said:

I *love* AA lights and I stick to them exclusively when it comes to lights that I travel with and EDC. A disadvantage to them is that they only put out 1.5 volts on average, which is half of what a typical CR123 cell puts out. Thus, to get equal power out of an AA light as a single CR123 light, it has to hold two batteries and thus it has to be much longer. That extra length doesn't bother me at all, but to some people that's a deal killer as far as the AA battery option is concerned.

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voltage is not power. nominal voltage times capacity is power. a single size AA cell has roughly the same or more power than an equivalant cr123 size cell, not half.

Hobbs said:

Thanx for the info. Going to be a SF LX2 or Quark AA/2. Both will cover the high and low range. Leaning towards the Quark because my wife and I travel to some out of the way areas on adventure travel trips, and you can always get AAs. Anyone care to argue why I should avoid a AA light?

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Hobbs - a few things to think about. The LX2 and the Quark lights are more spot and less flood - very throwy lights.

If you go for the LX2 strongly consider the SF diffuser for close up work. With the TIR lens it is a very tight spot but great with a diffuser. I don't know if there is a true diffuser for the Quark.

I do IT so I am inside a datacenter and servers and PCs all the time. The lights I am fond of at the moment for close up work are the NDI for AA and the E1L for CR123. Both have long runtime at the low end. The NDI is pretty floody and the R2 version is very bright on the high level. The E1L is just a great light - some prefer the E1B for a higher level at the cost of runtime. Even at a rated 45 Lumens the E1L can push them all downrange with the TIR lens and get some good throw.

If you want a light to light up a house 300 yards down the street - buy a second light because I don't feel you will find a light that is quite diverse enough to be inside a PC and down the street.