David and Goliath

The very small amount of light that's needed to navigate a trail in the dark continues to surprise me. So too does the distance a small light can illuminate a reflective object.

My Arc AAA is plenty of light for lighting a path and objects 20 - 30 feet away, in dark conditions. I could detect dim light reflected from shrubs 100' away. It lit up a small city limits sign at 400+ feet away. The, otherwise, invisible sign was clearly shining with only the AAA for light. Granted, a brighter light is necessary for accurate identification of faces or animals, more than, say, 40 feet away.

At the other extreme, my "2MCP" spotlight lights up trees aprox. 600'+ away. It has too much side spill which hinders seeing distant objects as well as I might. Some day I'd like to get a good spotlight that doesn't waste so much of the lamp's energy.

Of the two, David gets a AAA rating for usefulness, from me.

/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/happy14.gif

Wasn't that a cartoon? Wait, which one was Davey? the little boy or the dog?
"Helllloooooo, Davvvey!"

Man, Davey was the little boy! Duh!

An ARC AAA will light up coyote eyes hundreds of feet away. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/huh.gif

What is really, truely amazing is the MK1! (Human eyeball.) The dymanic range from high noon on the equator in the desert to a glow ring in quality dark.

Larry

Ambient light has a HUGE impact on how useful a particular light level is. That's why I have stuff ranging form a photon freedom to a 2mcp spotlight. Of course there's also the distance factor. But if you want everything from night vision to seeing across a lake, that kind of range is really needed.