Do any of you use Incandescent lights anymore?

It all started for me when I hot rodded my 3D Maglight with a Malkoff Upgrade. Then I bought myself a Streamlight Stinger LED DS HP for a belt light, and now it is about all I use at work. I have determined that once I run out of replacement bulbs for my Ultrastinger that I am going to get a Terralux upgrade for it and be done there as well. I just don't think there are any Incans out there that interest me anymore. I have been tempted to do an LED upgrade on my patrol car spot, but I don't own the car so......

Check out the Incan forum. There are still some really amazing incans out there, especially if you're running rechargeables and can avoid the pain of running through $50 worth of batteries in an hour.

Today, incandescents are really only used for high output or color rendition. Neither of these advantages are really necessary for general purpose use, so efficiency and reliability are more important, and that's why everything is transitioning to LED.

However, the patrol car spotlight is a good counterexample: an LED spotlight either won't be as bright, or will be cost-prohibitive.

Falling back in Love with my M3's here, and I've always preferred a P60 in my G2's...and nothing LED I've seen beats the awesome color throw on target like the Surefire M4...Even though my M3LT is brighter, the M4 is better for "positively identifying" things down range.

I was out the other night with my old man at his place and we were in his yard looking at a tree that had the bark shredded/removed from it by possums about 10-15 feet above us. We were trying to work out why they were doing this. He shone his standard 4D maglight on it and you could see heaps of detail, color etc but it was dim and only lit up a small amount of the tree. You could clearly see where the bark had been shredded. I shone my ST20 on the same spot and it was much brighter and lit up the whole tree but couldn't make out any detail at all. It all just looked like normal tree bark there was simply no color rendition or detail at all and the ST20 was vastly outdone by a 4D maglight with worn out batteries.

I can only assume that a neutral or more yellow LED would have been better.

cheers

cheers

I recently won a cheap new Surefire 6P with the good ol' P60 and I still find it a useful light with decent throw. However, it will be upgraded shortly with a SS bezel ring and a Malkoff M61W!

James....

Robin24k said:

Today, incandescents are really only used for high output or color rendition. Neither of these advantages are really necessary for general purpose use, so efficiency and reliability are more important, and that's why everything is transitioning to LED.

However, the patrol car spotlight is a good counterexample: an LED spotlight either won't be as bright, or will be cost-prohibitive.

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Seems like the LEDs have High Output though too, I had never heard of an 800 lumen incan flashlight the size of a maglite, but you can get a TK41 that will do it. I understand about the cost prohibitive part of the car spotlight thing. An incan bulb is 10 bucks tops, while the LED set up is about 150 to 200 bucks. I guess I haven't messed around with the lights enough to really miss color rendition yet, I am still just awed by the output.

Occasionally I use my SF E1E because I like to change from the cool LED tint to the warm incan one.

Kilovolt said:

Occasionally I use my SF E1E because I like to change from the cool LED tint to the warm incan one.

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Yep! The E1e is hard to beat in the compact Incan dept...and it has awesome perpihery lighting!

I have a few in the garage that somebody gifted me thinking "he likes flashlights, let's get him a blister pack of them from costco".

They came with cells. As soon as the "D" sized cells die, the lights go in the trash.

Use my UK-SL6 every now and then. It was my first bright light that started my interest in quality flashlights. I bought it using Brocks' excellent testing data.

You won't like the results with changing the spotlight from incan to LED. Our new lightbars are all LED and has spots for both front and side. Hate them. They're bright but gray/bluish and really don't project the light very far.

The incan vs LED topic has been beaten to death but I continue to believe that someone that's using their light to see injuries on people (alive or dead), need to tell the difference between a dark blue/green car and a black one at night, or finds themselves looking for bullet casings in a lawn then an incan light is still the best choice.

FWIW

i slapped a P60 bulb into my Solarforce L2 on a whim, and found myself using it more and more, over my brighter and more energy efficient lighting devices.
the colour temperature and colour rendition were addictive.

i was using it for days, until i ran a multimeter across it and realised it was using 8.4 watts to produce less light than my three watt XR-E light.

so, naturally, i stopped using it and asked Nailbender to make me up a P60-dropin with a high-CRI 3000k XP-G
hopefully it'll arrive soon.

I have the Brinkman version of a Surefire G2 that I still use from time to time but only because I haven't decided which P60 drop in I want yet.

We have gone to the all LED lightbars too, some of them, like mine, still have the Halogen takedowns and alley lights, they are pathetic though, can't hardly see anything. Doesn't compare to using the spot. I guess maybe I would be best served to keep my ultrastinger as an incan then rather than upgrade it. I can always get better LED lights like the TK41 and LD40 when I am looking for more lights to buy.

One other thing about the LED lightbars, dang if those blue LEDS aren't bright. They get someone's attention so much better than the old strobes I had. I wouldn't trade this light bar for anything.

Incan has it's place but for small EDC size lights I can't see myself ever going back. It's great to see some of the manufacturers addressing the CRI issue. I think it'll be awhile before really high output, high CRI LED lights become affordable and mainstream enough to kill the incans for good

As you can tell from the incan section, people still use incans.

My favourite incan would be the Surefire G3 running a P90 on 2X 17500, I almost never use a light for more than 1hour so I'm fine with incans.

For me the question would be....Do you use LED anymore?

I have one LED I use. A Milky L1 with SSC P4 T1 4000K 93 CRI. It is the only Led I can distinguish objects well with outdoors.

All my other lights are SF incands from the M6 to the E2E.

Im in a rural area and outside a lot at night. The led do not work well in these conditions.

oldways said:

For me the question would be....Do you use LED anymore?

I have one LED I use. A Milky L1 with SSC P4 T1 4000K 93 CRI. It is the only Led I can distinguish objects well with outdoors.

All my other lights are SF incands from the M6 to the E2E.

Im in a rural area and outside a lot at night. The led do not work well in these conditions.

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Yeah, alot of my SF's are still incan...E2E w/ MN02, M6, M4, 3 M3's, several G2's/G2R's with P60's. Not a big fan of the P90...the awful beam pattern isn't worth the runtime. If it had a nice hot-spot like the P60/M4, I'd slap 3-Cells in there and fire it right up. I like to use LED's for goofing off/playing, or just general purpose illumination...but when I'm walking a creek bed covered with trees at 2am with no moon, and no light pollution, that incan makes all the difference in the world. I usually take my G2R with 3 spare charged B65's. I have about 12-14 B65's, so if needed, I could go all night.

oldways said:

For me the question would be....Do you use LED anymore?

I have one LED I use. A Milky L1 with SSC P4 T1 4000K 93 CRI. It is the only Led I can distinguish objects well with outdoors.

All my other lights are SF incands from the M6 to the E2E.

Im in a rural area and outside a lot at night. The led do not work well in these conditions.

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I work for a Sheriff's office and I work out in the county a lot at night and I would disagree. I find my Streamlight DS LED HP to be a very good light, I hardly use any of my other lights any more I like it that much.