Just got my SSC P7-C

Just got this from China. They said it was 900 lumens.
Closed the bedroom door and window and tried it out. It seems
just barely brighter than my quark 123 mini 189 lumens. Is something wrong?? Do I need to charge the battery that came with it?
It sure doesn't seem 5 times brighter than my Quark mini.
Any suggestions? Or anyone else have one of these?

I'll try it out tonight in the dark, outside and see how it throws and spills.

Hello and :welcome:


I'm not sure about yours, but I have an MTE P7 and while it also claims 900 lumens, I'd say it's maybe 500 out the front.

Now because of how the eye works, 500 won't quite look like twice as bright as 190.... expecially as the floody P7 makes it look even less bright than it is.

Try bouncing the light off the roof of your room in the dark. If it looks nearly twice as bright when looking at something in the room, then you'd doing ok.

These 1-Cell 18650 P7 Lights, barely put out 500...Initially after turn-on close to 500, after a minute 430 and dropping...

Mr.Gman did some measurements i think. With an IMR in dd it should be better i think.

Thanks for the answers. I got to thinking, perhaps a 900 lumens isn't 5 times as bright as a 180 lumens. Maybe it doesn't work that way in a linear fashion.

I did try it outside and it seemed almost twice as bright. It's still a great little flashlight.

Under my name it says I'm unenlightened. :huh: My gosh, I've bought 5 flashlights in the last 3 weeks. I feel like I have a sickness and already a flashaholic. . . and am eyeballing one of those 25 million cp spotlights online. I only need maybe 2 flashlights.

There's nothing wrong, except that what's printed on those budget Chinese lights is somewhat exagerated. I have the MTE P7 and I'd estimate it at around 300 lumens on a fresh cell. This is what I expected from a DX flashlight claiming 900 lumens. I have no complaints about it for the price, but keep in mind the lumen ratings on those flashlights are not what you'll actually get coming out the front.

DavyCrockett said:

I got to thinking, perhaps a 900 lumens isn't 9 times as bright as a 180 lumens. Maybe it doesn't work that way in a linear fashion.

Click to expand...

Haha, no it wouldn't be. 180 x 9 would be 1620 lumens. You are correct about it not working in a linear fashion though.

I meant 5 times.

So with lumens, a 500 lumens is not 5 times as bright as a 100 lumens?

So I just sent off for one of those 3500 lumens, HID, 35W, so it won't be about 17 times as powerful as a 200 lumens then. (or it won't be 18 times more powerful than my little Quark 123 189 lumens?)

DavyCrockett said:

I meant 5 times.

So with lumens, a 500 lumens is not 5 times as bright as a 100 lumens?

So I just sent off for one of those 3500 lumens, HID, 35W, so it won't be about 17 times as powerful as a 200 lumens then. (or it won't be 18 times more powerful than my little Quark 123 189 lumens?)

Click to expand...

That's right. Well, it will be that many times more powerful, but not noticably by eye. I can't remember what the formula is for how much brighter it will actually seem, something like 100% brighter will appear 30% brighter... that's the gist of it anyway.

well, 500 Lumens would be 5 times more lumens than 100 lumens, but it wouldn't be 5 times as bright in a spot. Then there is the human response to brightness, and since the P7 is floody, you won't see most of that light in the hotspot anyway.

You are outputting 500 Lumens, but... it's complicated

I have a green laser, that puts out a really bright spot, but is probably 0.05 lumens, and I also have a few 500 Lumen+ lights that really really flood and seem to be really really weak (until you get them in the right environment)

Keep reading here, all the answers are around here somewhere

Yes, the beam pattern can influence how bright it appears compared to other lights, but I think even with identical patterened beams you wouldn't see twice the lumens as twice as bright. That's my understanding anyway.

Light is perceived logarithmically. If I hand you two lights, one at 150 lumens and one at 180 lumens, you'd have trouble telling them apart. If they had wildly different beam patterns I could probably fool you, even on a ceiling bounce test. To get a source that looks "Twice as bright" you something like 4x the lumens. And then your eyes will adjust to it and it won't look any brighter anyway.

Edit:
The 3500 lumen light will appear to be:
189 x4 = 756 x4 = 3024 about 4 times brighter than the Quark. But it has a different beam pattern, and that will make a difference. My HID spotlight is ridiculously bright - I'm still looking for reasons to fire it outside because I can't tell how bright it is indoors. I feel the weird "uniform light output getting dimmer" feeling of my pupils contracting every time I use it in an enclosed space.

Ok, thanks guys. I"m catching on.

I guess I need an HID 25 million spotlight for reaching out there and the 3500 lumens one that's coming from Shanghia will do for brightening up everything.

The 3500 lumen one will be 4 times brighter than the 189 lumens Quark.
Wow, then that Quark is quite the little power house, for a pocket carry.

I think I'm going crazy. :candle:

An aside. We live high in the mountains at 9000' elevation. No street lights of course, but bears and mt. lions. and deer and elk. Looks like i have a new hobby.

DavyCrockett said:

I meant 5 times.

So with lumens, a 500 lumens is not 5 times as bright as a 100 lumens?

So I just sent off for one of those 3500 lumens, HID, 35W, so it won't be about 17 times as powerful as a 200 lumens then. (or it won't be 18 times more powerful than my little Quark 123 189 lumens?)

Click to expand...

Actually if you get one of those 35W HID's such as the Power On Board lights, it will certainly look many times brighter than a 200 lumen light (way more than 4 times to my eyes)... the tightness of the beam certainly helps with perception here. My HID is the only light that still impresses me.

Seriously if you compare a 35W HID to a 190 Lumen Quark, you'll be very impressed. The Quarks rock for their size, but the HID is a compleatly different beast. I'm like Apple and keep trying to find excuses to use mine.

is it multi mode?

maybe your in low mode

try adjusting the mode.

As far as i know, it's just 1 mode - i think. Don't know how to adjust to another mode if it is indeed multi mode.
It's the MTE PC 7.

EDIT: I just tried it. It's a clicky. ONce on, i tired just barely touching the clicker, and it started changing modes.
It now has 5 modes. low, med., high, sos, and strobe. Thanks, that helped.

DavyCrockett said:

As far as i know, it's just 1 mode - i think. Don't know how to adjust to another mode if it is indeed multi mode.
It's the MTE PC 7.

EDIT: I just tried it. It's a clicky. ONce on, i tired just barely touching the clicker, and it started changing modes.
It now has 5 modes. low, med., high, sos, and strobe. Thanks, that helped.

Click to expand...

The Quark Mini is a real 160~220 OTF lumens....OTF = lumens you and my eyes actually see, not emitter lumens.

The MTE P7 MrGman tested only does does 500 turn-on, 350 at 3minutes with IMR 18650 cell. With lesser quality cell it was doing about 200~300 at turn-on.

Oh and that P7 will do 700~800 OTF lumens, but not in that light. Well; maybe with some added copper heatsink

Are you using an AW 2600mah 18650 or IMR 18650 cell?
What is your tailcap current? It should be 3A or so.

bigC

The battery says UltraFire TR 18650 2400mAh 3.7V

I'm fairly new to flashlights, I don't know what tailcap current means, nor
3A. :shakehead

DavyCrockett said:

The battery says UltraFire TR 18650 2400mAh 3.7V

I'm fairly new to flashlights, I don't know what tailcap current means, nor
3A. :shakehead

Click to expand...

Davy, you will be using 18650's and no voltage meter? You have no way to know what the voltage of your Li-Ion's are, and they probably came to you half charged. If you are in US, go to a Harbor Freight store and purchase a cheap DMM, Digital Multimeter. Use this DMM religiously to check the voltage of your Lithium Ion cells, and make sure that your charger is not chargeing to much above 4.2 volts. Also, read, read, search, search, here on CPF for info on Lithium Ion cells, and chargers, and the care of both.

Bill

DavyCrockett said:

The battery says UltraFire TR 18650 2400mAh 3.7V

I'm fairly new to flashlights, I don't know what tailcap current means, nor
3A. :shakehead

Click to expand...

If you had a IMR 18650 you would see nearly 50% more light and closer to 500 real OTF lumens. Some Ultrafires or Thrustfires may provide the 3A of current needed, but the IMR 18650 will do it alot better and I trust them more at high currents.

Just read up on li-on and IMR chemistry safety issues and then hit up lighthound.com....They ship fast and faster

bigc

Its not just the light : Batteries also affect performance .

I just tested some 18650's and the Spiderfire 18650 was very poor performing , measuring up to 2.2A on a fully charged cell .
Other cells have been able to do over 3A , the Samsung in particular measure some 3.15A [ ALL measurements @ tail ] .

So expect a battery that can deliver over 3A to outperform a battery that does a little over 2A by quite a margin .

So if the light does not perform as expected ?
Also important is the emitter used , for single 4.2v applications , a lower vF emitter is highly recommended . Whether the manufacturers understand this , or simply source what ever is cheaper ? and leave things to pot luck ?

Speaking of my own MTE , I did swap in a C***i bin emitter , and its got some very nice output , I dare say quite a bit higher than 500 when used with a good battery that can do 3A or better , and I would hazard that the emitter is being driven close to full power .

A dark room is a good test at night time .