Favorite mode spacing?

What type of mode spacing do you look for in your flashlights? I have some that just seem to annoy me and some that seem about right. I have come to a place where I want a three mode light with a 100% high a mid of around 100lm to 70lm mid and a low in the single digits, 6lm to 3lm low, is about right for me. Or a two mode with a 100% high and something in the 30lm to 20lm low range. (MY old eyes don't work as well as they use too so my numbers are set a little higher than some prefer for that reason) For me anything above 100lm or 200lm in a mid level is a waste, I will just run it on high if that middle level can't get it done. (one reason I like my LED's under-driven on the top end, and not pushing the thermal limits of the heatsink, or have a step down for high.) The medium is something I use more than any other setting and don't want a hot spot so bright to leave me seeing spots when using the light inside a building or room. I will take higher lumens on a flood light for that reason, but its not needed in a dark room. The low setting is normally used only when I want to use a light without disturbing someone else or walking into the woods to hunt and don't want to spook game, but still need to see any thing that could cause a fall or poke me in the eye. What do you guys like on your lights? Have your opinions on mode spacing changed with time and use?

In a small/medium size light...moonlight mode...30ish LM...120ish LM... and sky is the limit. I find 30 lumen to be enough for most tasks...and moonlight mode does not need to be super low for me...even 12 lumen I can sleep with...

3-4 lumens works ok as a low setting for me, but 0.2 moonlight mode is awesome!
Then for med something around 20-60 lumens.
For high output in a EDC pocket light I like 125-200 lumens.

I find that how the levels are set is critical to how much I enjoy using a light, so I'm always looking for lights that have a LOT of levels. Of course, that's why I go for lights, like the NovaTac 120P or the Zebralight SC600, that let me customize the light to how I want to use it, and allow for easy changing when needed.

I need a super low, like .06 (for late night bathroom runs), a good low like 5 or 10 for general stuff, 30-40 for reading, 90-120 for light walking, 200 for running, and 600-800 just for fun.

This is from David at 4 sevens on their mode spacing:

What we've done is spaced our each level of brightness by a factor of 5x the drive current. All modes except the first and the last follow this rule.
5 dynamically spaced output modes simply meet every lighting need.

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My first eagletac had modes spaced 6x apart: 8lm, 50lm, 300lm. I don't disagree with David but I would probably bump the number of from 5X - 7X. On something with a simple UI like a magnetic control ring and if I had as many modes as I wanted 5X apart would be fine. But on the other hand if I was forced to have only 3 modes on a 900 lumen light, I'd really space them apart as I like my lights to be as versatile as possible - if I grab my BIG LIGHT I want it to be able to do everything the little lights can do as well. So I'd probably space those modes as .3 lumens, 20 lumens and 900 lumens. With that large of a spacing there might be tasks where 1 level was not enough light and the next was too much... reading in bed for instance. .3 is usually enough but with ambient light it might be too low. 20 would be too much ecspecially with a sleeping spouse next to you.

I would also add I don't think the numbers you pick are near as important as the percentage of how apart the modes are spaced as your eye will compensate for that.

For instance if you had 5 modes on a 800 lumen light - firefly, low, medium, high, turbo if those modes are well spaced it doesn't really matter what you pick as your eyes will easily be able to adjust within the given range.

IE I would consider both:
.5, 6, 30, 180, 900 or .2, 3, 20, 130, 900 good spacing. If you had 2 lights that were the same in all other areas but the mode level I doubt you would notice which was which when you were out as your eyes would have an easy time compensating between those levels to what was ideal for you.

Having just bought a Quark Pro, I like their mode spacing quite a bit, though I'd probably drop 1 of the 5 brightness levels, and just go with 4 modes: 0.3 lm, 6 lm, 60lm, 300lm. Those 4 levels would be enough to handle all of my needs, and I'd have 1 less mode to step through.

Infinite spacing is probably my favorite.
For preset modes, the Quark 123 2 lights I have are perfectly spaced.
The biggest thing I look for is a 2 - 5 lumen low. I find that is where I like to have my light set to when I walk.

I'm with RickyP and the others on David's mode spacing and so far Quarks being the closest to my ideal. I don't really care about the high end so much, as long as the steps are ~ 4x or more.... anything much less feels like a wasted mode slot to cycle through. However, as a small single cell AA/14500 EDC guy, runtime is important to me so I always try and use my night vision and the lowest modes as much as possible. I specifically for look for a "bright" moonlight around 0.3-0.5 lms and low around 2-5 lumens which I like for reading/close task work and (like Lou) walking non-technical terrain, respectively.

Zebralights have that great UI which offer so many different programmable options, so in theory you can tailor it just right, and I can with my H51w. However, I find all the low modes on my SC52 to be so far off spec (ie, 2-4x off) that it's become a "Goldie-Locks" shelf queen for me. Infinitely variable lights would really solve the perfect mode spacing problem, but the magnetic rings consume too much power for a low lumen/runtime fanatic like me, and I understand QTC gets pretty finicky at low lumens too.

My ideal EDC light is very reliable, sturdy, small, light, single celled, and has
1) An insanely bright, instantly accessible turbo (500+lm) that automatically falls back to a reasonable high (200+lm) within a few minutes. The light should last an hour or more in this mode.
2) An instantly accessible alternate mode with a memory or cycle setting for your chosen brightness
3) A simple way to vary brightness in the alternate mode. Completely variable is great but even just a few at Med (<100lm), Low (<20lm), and Moonlight (<5lm) are fine. For fixed spacing I find 4-5x jumps in brightness about right.

The Zebralight SC52 is the closest I've found to this at the moment. Really like a lot of things about it but there are a few things that keep me cycling through other lights like the Sunwayman V11r and Nitecore EC1.

rickypanecatyl said:

I would also add I don't think the numbers you pick are near as important as the percentage of how apart the modes are spaced as your eye will compensate for that.

For instance if you had 5 modes on a 800 lumen light - firefly, low, medium, high, turbo if those modes are well spaced it doesn't really matter what you pick as your eyes will easily be able to adjust within the given range.

IE I would consider both:
.5, 6, 30, 180, 900 or .2, 3, 20, 130, 900 good spacing. If you had 2 lights that were the same in all other areas but the mode level I doubt you would notice which was which when you were out as your eyes would have an easy time compensating between those levels to what was ideal for you.

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I see where you're coming from with that line of reasoning, and it makes a lot of sense, and while you're eyes might be able to adjust to the difference between 130 lumens and 180 lumens, there is going to be a difference in the runtime, and I'm always looking to find the lowest level I can use for a particular situation in order to maximize runtime, so having the ability to "fine tune" the light output makes a lot of sense to me, instead of being forced to use 180 lumens when I know 130 lumens will do perfectly fine.

Of course a lot of folks don't want the kind of complexity that comes with being able to fine tune a light's output, and I completely understand that, but for me, I like having as many options in the UI as possible.

Derek Dean said:

I see where you're coming from with that line of reasoning, and it makes a lot of sense, and while you're eyes might be able to adjust to the difference between 130 lumens and 180 lumens, there is going to be a difference in the runtime, and I'm always looking to find the lowest level I can use for a particular situation in order to maximize runtime, so having the ability to "fine tune" the light output makes a lot of sense to me, instead of being forced to use 180 lumens when I know 130 lumens will do perfectly fine.

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With lights with infinite settings, do you actually know what power you're using? If not, my concern would be that I'd be using a higher setting than I think, and thus run the battery down before I was done. That's no problem if I'm just using it around home (I'd stick new cells in it), but if I'm on a long walk in the dark, it might be an issue.

Etsu said:

With lights with infinite settings, do you actually know what power you're using? If not, my concern would be that I'd be using a higher setting than I think, and thus run the battery down before I was done. That's no problem if I'm just using it around home (I'd stick new cells in it), but if I'm on a long walk in the dark, it might be an issue.

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True, which is why I like the Zebralight UI so much. They give you 3 basic levels, which keeps the UI uncluttered, but also give you several choices for where each of those 3 levels can be set, so you can fine tune the 3 levels to your tastes.

And, with a light like the NovaTac 120P, which has 21 discreet steps that you can choose from for each of it's four levels, I've found that once I got the light setup for my taste, I've left it set the same way for the last 5-6 years, so I know precisely how much runtime I'll get with each level. The key is that I wasn't limited to what levels the manufacturer thought would be good, I was able to fine tune them to MY taste.

I do agree about the infinite level lights, I had an Infinilux, and while it was a nice light, the UI didn't work for me and I didn't like not knowing the level or runtime.

Favorite mode spacing for what? Floody light or throwy light?

It's a huge consideration.

Jet beam rrt01 has been a favorite since it came out. It has ended my EDC search.....for now. Great moonlight and Approx 500 max. I really like not having to flip thru modes.
Another favorite is Mr elfin. If concerned about fixed levels, this is a great choice for small EDC.
I guess rings variable or fixed levels work for me.

Etsu said:

With lights with infinite settings, do you actually know what power you're using? If not, my concern would be that I'd be using a higher setting than I think, and thus run the battery down before I was done. That's no problem if I'm just using it around home (I'd stick new cells in it), but if I'm on a long walk in the dark, it might be an issue.

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I agree completely. Three to four well-spaced modes strike the best balance between usability and convenience in my book.

An interesting perspective on mode spacing is a burst mode, i.e. 30ish seconds of very high output when the light is first turned on at max. That way you get an extra output level without cluttering the interface unnecessarily.

I have had infinite, ramping and fixed. When where I use changes (snow/rain/clear, woods/tropics/city/garage, moonlit/backlit/pitch-black) I find that no fixed modes are what I want. I will never buy another multi-mode light where I can't pick the spacing.

Saint_Dogbert said:

I agree completely. Three to four well-spaced modes strike the best balance between usability and convenience in my book.

An interesting perspective on mode spacing is a burst mode, i.e. 30ish seconds of very high output when the light is first turned on at max. That way you get an extra output level without cluttering the interface unnecessarily.

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Nothing to do with this conversation but just have to throw my pet peave out there... in the flashlight world "infinite" usually means about 47 - 63..... maybe close to infinite, but not the full scheh bang!

rickypanecatyl said:

Nothing to do with this conversation but just have to throw my pet peave out there... in the flashlight world "infinite" usually means about 47 - 63..... maybe close to infinite, but not the full scheh bang!

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Not always. I have a red/white astronomy LED flashlight I bought a looong time ago, and it uses a variable resistor wheel (like an old radio tuner) that controls the brightness. It may not be "infinite", but it probably results in millions of possible brightness levels. Well... thousands at least.

I don't use it much anymore, but it is a fantastic light for extremely low lighting. Specifically designed not to disrupt dark-adapted eyes. (More useful when I was younger and my eyes were better in the dark.)

I recently picked up a 47's QTLC just to try out the 0.25 lumen setting. Really didn't do much for me. It is true that 0.25 was plenty for navigating about the house at 3am, and the 4.8 lumen mode looks like a fricken spotlight under those conditions.

I'm 56 years old so 0.25 doesn't do much for me beyond basic navigation. Maybe if I still had the eyes of a 22 year old!

So now I just ordered a iTP A2 EOS and an anxious to try the 1.5 lumen setting.

I really like the settings on the Femix LD10. 3,13,45 +100 for when you really need some light. The LD10 will likely be the next light I buy after the iTP arrives.

I guess my ideal for an eos would be 5 modes: 1-2, 8-12, 30, 75, 125, with a 100m throw, memory, and no strobe. Or a 4 mode without the 125l.



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