Random Dan
Flashlight Enthusiast
- Joined
- Jun 30, 2012
- Messages
- 1,371
Last night I was out for nice nighttime nature hike (aka flashlight walk) and I was musing on the ideal beam shape. I used a light with a carclo triple in it for a bit, but I felt like I had to crank up the lumens quite a bit to get the same situational awareness as I would with a less powerful reflector beam. Even then, it was not great at punching out 30-50ft into the woods on either side of the trail. Regardless of the light's efficiency in lm/W, the fact that it requires more lumens to get the job done makes it less efficient than it could be.
On the flip side I also used my lumintop fw1a with sst20. It has a relatively narrow and intense spot with dim spill. This also meant that I had to turn the brightness up more to get the spill adequately bright, which meant pumping unnecessarily many lumens into the now too bright spot. Also not as efficient as it could be. Good for reaching out into the woods, but ideal for lighting the way in front of you.
The best balance I've found yet is a very close tie between the malkoff m61 reflector and the hds edc reflector, with either nichia 219 or cree xpg emitters. No matter the brightnes level, it never feels like either spot or spill is too bright relative the other. Just a perfect beam that can light up everything in front of you and also reach out a little ways. Honorable mentions, that are almost just as good, include convoy s2/s2+ with nichia 219 and zebralight sc64w hi.
What's your favorite general purpose beam?
On the flip side I also used my lumintop fw1a with sst20. It has a relatively narrow and intense spot with dim spill. This also meant that I had to turn the brightness up more to get the spill adequately bright, which meant pumping unnecessarily many lumens into the now too bright spot. Also not as efficient as it could be. Good for reaching out into the woods, but ideal for lighting the way in front of you.
The best balance I've found yet is a very close tie between the malkoff m61 reflector and the hds edc reflector, with either nichia 219 or cree xpg emitters. No matter the brightnes level, it never feels like either spot or spill is too bright relative the other. Just a perfect beam that can light up everything in front of you and also reach out a little ways. Honorable mentions, that are almost just as good, include convoy s2/s2+ with nichia 219 and zebralight sc64w hi.
What's your favorite general purpose beam?