Should I Have Some Fun With LED Flashlights At Work?

My current employment is a job at a place that is primarily in a fixed location. We do an outside perimeter patrol with a partner. We are issued Streamlight Stinger DS LED, but we are permitted to carry an additional light, if we so choose. So, I am considering bringing my Streamlight Stinger that I upgraded with the 300 lumen TerraLUX TLE-ST1 kit to work. I am thinking of not telling him and seeing if he notices.

-Do you guys think I should try it?


-Do you guys think someone is likley to notice the difference from OEM Stinger LED to TerraLUX or is it just us "flashaholics" that would even notice?

180 lumens and 300 lumens is not a big difference (not to mention that TerraLUX doesn't use OTF lumens, so it's going to be less than 300 lumens OTF). What could be noticeable is the beam from the TIR optic, but again, the difference is small.

Personally, I think you should use your job as an excuse to play with your lights, and buy more!

That said, I agree, that 300 lumens at the emitter is probably going to end up being about 225 - 240 OTF. You won't see much difference between that and 200 OTF. The way the visual system works, in general, there has to be a threefold increase in physical light intensity to produce a percieved doubling in brightness, so you'd need a light that will do 600 OTF for it to look twice as bright.

So, get an SC600w, or a Spark SL6-740, etc. to use as a duty light. They're small, insanely bright, and will last a whole night on one battery if you run them at medium settings. These are floody lights though, and if you're doing security, you might be better served by a thrower, something like an EagleTac M3 series, or one of the big O-Lights, or Dereelights, etc. You can also look into a new Solarforce P60 host that just came out called the Guardian, it uses up to 4x18650's, is compatible with the various strike bezels they make, and so on. They say it has a limit of using a drop in with a 500 lumen OTF output, but I think that's conservative. It looks like it's easily got enough mass you could run a triple XPG or triple XML in it on high for short periods without any trouble. It's also the same size as a small baton, and has a heavy wall construction, so you can use it for um... *work related* purposes if need be.