How bright is reasonable?

Hi everyone, I'm looking to build a custom diy p60. Most of that project wool be on the custom forum, but I wanted to ask here: how bright is reasonable for etc/camping?

I've seen leds available up to 1000, lumens which seems excessive, is 400 a more reasonable rate for etc and camping? I want something that came be bright if I need it, but no so bright as to get hot and drain batteries so fast.

Is it going to be a 1-mode or multi-mode? For a multi-mode, 400 lumens in high from an XM-L2 in a P60 sized reflector is fairly decent, not huge amounts of throw to see in the distance, but a very useable beam.

If you're going with 1 mode, choose by output duration you need rather than raw lumen numbers and work backwards, ie. you need it to be as bright as possible for 1/5/10 hours so 800/250/70 lumens (roughly, using XM-L2 cool LED and 3100mAh 18650 cell).

For camping you do not need terribly high lumen levels. May even be a bit distracting to others if you have excessively high levels. IMO 20-40 floody lumens is a very nice level for poking around the campsite, a high of 100 or 200 lumens would be good if you intend to go explore more. A moonlight mode can come in handy inside the tent as well. Usually I have a small light for in the tent c/w fast moonlight and low modes (Zebralight SC52 in my case) and then another light usually larger in size. For the larger light I'm a fan of a simple two-mode light, spaced at 20 and 150 lumens is pretty ideal IMO.

For you I would suggest a floody XM-L drop in, 2-3 mode only with fast latching memory (so you can use it with a forward switch without accidental mode changes on successive on/off cycles). For 2-mode I'd recommend high of 200 lumens and a mid/lo of 20 lumens. For 3-mode perhaps 200->20->2. The XM-L can be driven alot harder but IMO this level is plenty and allows for lots of runtime on all levels.

For edc around 200 would be far enough for me and at present using 80 on max.If you could persuade me to go rago and camp i would think 500 should be well enough in a tent.

Cant add much to the excellent advice,certainly a low so not to disturb others in the night,even 5lm may be too high. General use from 20 to 100,200 is usually enough as mr mcnair said for most if not all tasks within reason................certainly camping

It is nice to have that bit more on tap if/when required though,maybe checking 200yds away in a field or woods...........if that could be a case of course.

Last camping trip i had,i used my v11r mainly around the caravan and field for general use,very rarely did i turn the control ring up more than 3/4 ,in fact the darker it got, and as eyes adapt ,the less output i found i wanted/needed.