New guy question on understanding output

Hi - I've just recently discovered this forum.
So far I've gone from planning to buy a SF E2e to actually ordering a HDS U60.
Now that I've really been getting into reading this forum, I'm learning that there is a huge custom world.
One of my problems is that all I'd ever read were specs on SF lights (Lumens), now all these customs are in another language
I see LEDs rated 3w, 5w,etc. I've read that you can't really compare candlepower to lumens - now I see Ma too
How can I get an idea of what kind of output a light will give?
There are a lot of lights advertised that sound great, but I don't know what to compare their output to.
TIA for any light you can shed on this for me!

Hey Johns, welcome to CPF!
Have you been over at ledmuseum.org and flashlightreviews.com? They're great sources of information that'll acquaint you more with all these terms.
G'luck!

I'm jealous. I want a HDS U60 too!!! (Shssssss, don't let my Surefires or my Gladius her that <grin>)

Seriously though, the "watt" rating is usually what "class" the LED is in. This doesn't really tell you much about brightness because I have strongly driven 3 watt Luxeons that will stomp some of my underdriven 5 watters.

Question #6 on the "Flashlight Recommendation Checklist" at this link
https://www.candlepowerforums.com/threads/96884
will give you some real-world examples of how many lumens for what purpose.

Quickbeam's comparison charts (output and throw) here http://www.flashlightreviews.com/features/output_vs_throw.htm will also give you a good comparison to a known flashlight.

Thank you !!

I'll get reading

Just wanted to say thanks again - I've spent about 4 hours on the ledmuseum and flashlight reviews sites so far. Great information :wow:

If you want to get a basic idea about the output and performance of a custom light here are a few items that might help you:

- light output is a function of the used LED (mostly LuxIII and LuxV) together with the drive current applied to the LED and the optical system losses (reflector, optic, lens, ...)
- a LuxIII can be driven up to 1000mA and will put out up to 80 lumens for a T-bin (roughly). These are LED lumens and not output of the flashlight though
- a LuxV can be driven up to 700mA and will put out up to 180-200lm for the best bins (the LuxV is actually 4 LED dies connected)
- a LuxIII is thus a smaller lightsource and can be focussed into a tighter beam
- the binning of a LED describes its characteristics in efficiency (output per current), color tint of white and forward voltage (might do a search on this)
- beam characteristics depend on the optic or reflector used ... generalle speaking ... the bigger the reflector, the tighter the beam. However, this is much more complicated than that, unfortunately.
- other very important things to know are: power source, runtime, user interface (the switch ... a lot of different pholosophies here), construction quality (anodise, lens material, reflector type, ...), regulated or not, multi-brightness, other options and modes, ...

Usually, you will find a thread here on CPF describing each existing custom light in a very detailed fashion. It will suffice to know the exact name of the light and do a search and you will find all you need. If you have a basic idea about lights (see above) you will be able to judge for yourself if this is a light for you or not.
In the review section or on the external review sites (you already know some) you can read what others with more experience think of those lights.

If still not sure ... ask a question on CPF!
The more specific the question, the better the answers will be.

bernie

The sticky threads in various forums are often very good resources, especially in the review forum you can find good info and tons of useful links in the stickies.

Thank you - The custom lights are what I've been trying to figure out now.

A couple that I'm interested in are that pc programable flashlight(Indium Smart) and the JIL Intelli but so far I have been unable to figure out what to compare them to.
Anyway I'll keep researching

The Indium Smart isn't for sale yet, it will be distributed by JSBurly's, a CPF sponosring dealer. There is a huge thread running called something like "First computer controlled flashlight ..." ... which is currently active and should be no problem to find it.

The JIL is a Korean CR2 light that can be obtained by some of our east Asian vendors, but I guess the Intelli is some mod, maybe with a FluPic board, but I am clueless here :shrug:

See ... I am here so long now and there's always more than you can possibly have in your head ... ...

bernie