1/10th of a lumen

I'm looking at a thrunite light with 1/10th of a lumen. i love my moonlight mode on the quark 2aa, its about one lumen if i remember properly. but 1/10th of a lumen, is that even useful? i can barely walk around my house with 1 lumen, I'm assuming 1/10th is nothing. do you guys have experience with the firefly mode on these lights and is it useful or ridiculous and never gets used?

Interesting, which model is it ?

there are some Zebralights that are even lower on firefly. Yes, 1/10th of a lumen is actually plenty when its totally dark you will be surprised. A rough rule of thumb Ive read is that 1-15 lumens is considered "moonlight" mode range and anything sub lumen is "firefly". The moonlight on your Quark is likely high moonlight range it is a big difference than the TN youre looking at but the sub lumen range is actually useful and likely runs for tens of days

I'd consider ~ 1 lumen to be "moonlight" and < 0.1 lm to be "firefly" ....

15 lumens is way beyond moonlight, I'd even consider that a "medium" mode on a lot of lights (for example 5/15/50 lm, as L/M/H).

Output " Level 1 " on newer HDS is 0.02 lumens, and modes that low are specifically sought by some here on CPF.

10,12,15 whichever. Moonlight is actually pretty bright. If I were to put full moon far out in the country on a clear night into flash light terms 45 lumens springs to mind. Fireflies Ive seen some I would say put out 6-8. Just saying, the 1-15 range is just something I read here on the forums a long time ago it made sense then and manufacturers seem to have adopted that sub lumen firefly and 1-15 lumen moonlight scale more or less.

OP it sounds like you are talking about the TN4A maybe the TN12?

Full moonlight on a clear night is < 1 lux, so can't exactly convert to lumens ... but a flashlight with a few lumen output, normal beamshape, and short distance might throw about 1 lux.

A real firefly supposedly puts out ~ 0.025 lm, or 1/40th of a ( ~ 1 lumen ) candle.

The above were the best estimates I could find, the last time I tried searching for that data ... :shrug:

I'm on a quest to find the lowest low I can out of a flashlight.

On my zebralights at least, 1/10th of a lumen is bright enough to do stuff in the complete darkness. The zebralights also have 1/100th of a lumen, which I find to be near useless.

Prepped said:

I'm on a quest to find the lowest low I can out of a flashlight.

Click to expand...

Page 3 and 4 of this necro-thread were pretty active last month:

What's the DIMMEST flashlight?

Zebralights have the lowest modes that I have seen. Here are their low modes - Low: L1 3.5 Lm (16 days) or L2 0.4 Lm (2.5 months) / 0.06 Lm (4.6 months) / 0.01 Lm (5.5 months) this is with a 18650 battery. Also you can set the beacon mode to one of the really low modes so that it would hardly use much battery and this could be useful to leave the beacon mode on at night camping or a situation where it helps you locate the light quicker when you wake up and need a light quick. The lower modes are great if you get something in your eye and need to fish it out without blinding yourself.

CelticCross74 said:

10,12,15 whichever. Moonlight is actually pretty bright. If I were to put full moon far out in the country on a clear night into flash light terms 45 lumens springs to mind. Fireflies Ive seen some I would say put out 6-8. Just saying, the 1-15 range is just something I read here on the forums a long time ago it made sense then and manufacturers seem to have adopted that sub lumen firefly and 1-15 lumen moonlight scale more or less.

OP it sounds like you are talking about the TN4A maybe the TN12?

Click to expand...

moonlight is in the millions of lumens, but the light that hits the ground is what matters. So lux. Flashlight lux needs a given distance standard. The moonlight setting on flashlights tends it mimic looking directly at the LED.

Prepped said:

I'm on a quest to find the lowest low I can out of a flashlight.

Click to expand...

Then your quest ends with no flashligh...

Moonlight/Firefly is my most used level. I see the terms used interchangeably all the time. I just need sub 1 lumen. 0.5 lumens works well around a dark home. Once I hit 1 lumen, it is getting too bright for that usage.

archimedes said:

Output " Level 1 " on newer HDS is 0.02 lumens, and modes that low are specifically sought by some here on CPF.

Click to expand...

+1
i use the .02 on my HDS every night.

The 0.4 on Zebralight SC62W is great in complete darkness. You won't lose your night vision and there is enough light for close up reading. 0.1 is about half the brightness when perceived by naked eyes.

The night of the blood harvest Moon, it was lighting the ground more then the streetlights.
YMMV

Prepped said:

I'm on a quest to find the lowest low I can out of a flashlight.

Click to expand...

Jetbeam RRT01. Infinitely variable ring with kinda-logarithmic scaling. If you turn it just a bit, you get something down to a few microlumens. (i.e. the die can be turned so dim that a tritium vial is blinding in comparison).

For me the sub 1 lumen mode is completely useful and I actually specifically look for this when I'm purchasing a new light. I have a HDS, 120P NovaTac (USA made model), 2 MTN Electronics P60s, and a Jetbeam RRT-0, all with sub lumen outputs. One of these are what I reach for I'm I'll be using it after dark. In comparison, the MDC head that's on my E2D has a low level of 15 lumens and it's completely overwhelming when using it with night adjusted eyes.

Prepped- See Data's Spy lights. Nothing I've owned can go lower...

jasonsmaglites said:

I'm looking at a thrunite light with 1/10th of a lumen. i love my moonlight mode on the quark 2aa, its about one lumen if i remember properly. but 1/10th of a lumen, is that even useful? i can barely walk around my house with 1 lumen, I'm assuming 1/10th is nothing. do you guys have experience with the firefly mode on these lights and is it useful or ridiculous and never gets used?

Click to expand...

I'm a moonlight snob and into testing them for output, runtime, current draw. Output/runtime specs exaggeration and sample volatility can be HUGE (multiple factors) in the sub-lumen modes, depending upon manufacturer.

Quark moonlights are consistently in the 0.2-0.4 lm range, which is pretty "bright" among sub-lumen lights. I like them in a floody (XML) 0.3-0.4 lm range which is a comfortable book reading level for me, and therefore also good for most close task work with my hands. It's too bright for completely dark-adapted eyes (i.e., waking from sleep for a bathroom run), but I use moonlight for hours on end and find I generally can only get my eyes "mostly" dark adapted. I use Quark moonlights as my general purpose low mode, and 3 lumens as my medium.

Thrunite fireflies - I have a 0.1 twisty T10 and 0.05 Neutron V2, and I find their output specs accurate (not runtime though) - are better for the midnight bathroom runs, but that only accounts for a minute or so a day, so it feels like a wasted mode slot to me. I prefer to bury a brighter moonlight in my fist and use my pinkie as an aperture control for when my eyes are completely dark adapted. I don't like TNs mode spacing though, after a dim firefly, they like to jump 100-200x to double digit "low" modes - I'm always between too dim and too bright on their lights. Interestingly, the Quark's brighter moonlights also consume less milliamperes of power than TNs dim fireflies (my samples).