A lot of the cheap flashlights at stores arent very bright, why is this? what spec am I looking for that signifies brightness?
Is there somewhere I can go online to get a bright bright torch light? like the kind thats bright enough to go onto a gun or whatever?
Brightness has many meanings...and, the cheap lights tend to fudge them anyway, etc.
For example, the spec you might see the most often is lumens. You can't SEE lumens, they are the photons sent out by the flashlight...but you can't see them unless they hit something and bounce back at your eyes.
The light that you do see, that does bounce back is called the lux.
They sometimes tell you the candela of the light (cd) which is the lux per square meter at 1 meter range.
The higher the lux on a target, the brighter the target is lit up.
The higher the cd of the flashlight is, the further away you can light things up.
So, if going on a gun for example, you might want a tight, long range spot beam, if you need to either temporarily blind a perp, etc, or target something far away...or, a flood of light to light up an entire room in one shot.
So, one is like those prison break movies, where the guy hides while the bright circle of light from the tower search light goes by, and then he runs for it....
...and the other is like its suddenly daylight out, all over.
If its a small handheld light...you can't make it daylight over an area the size of a football stadium, but might be able to light up an area the size of gym, etc...but, the pool of light will not go very far away like a searchlight can.
After that, its about how far away you want to be ABLE TO SEE WHAT.
