Question about hand held spotlights...

John Bourbon

John Bourbon

Well-known member
Hello all. Yesterday morning my Coleman spotlight finally died. It was an older one with the halogen bulb. In looking online for handheld spot lights (preferrably with the pistol grip), I see very few halogen lit ones and many LED spot lights.

The halogen spotlights rate their output in candlepower, where the LED ones seem to all talk lumens. Streamlight talks about theirs in "candela" and lumens. The light I had was 1 million candlepower, and was very bright. I'd like to get something similiarly bright, but don't know how to compare output. And given the crappy conditions we all go out in, water resistant/water proof would be nice.

Any learned duckboat members out there that can help me understand the relative output terms? If you have any expereinces with handheld LED spotlights, I'd love to hear about them also.

John Bourbon
 
I ran into a similar situation last year. My rechargeable 1.5 million finally bit the dust.

I bought a handheld that has somewhere around 100-110 lumens. It uses 6 AA batteries. For me running the small river down here and through flooded timber, it's sufficient, though my observations are that it's about 1/2 to 2/3 the effective distance of the 1-1.5 million cp spotlight, BUT, the light is "whiter" and more usable than the typical "yellow" light of a normal bulb. I think I have better contrast.

Bought another one at Wal-Mart that uses 4 C batteries and has 130 lumens. Haven't tried it yet.

If you are trying to spot a blind across the Mississippi River, what I have won't work very well. If you are trying to gauge 100 - 150 yards ahead or a little more, what I bought does nicely, and is considerably smaller than the Q-beam style lights.

Oh, and when I asked the guy at the sporting goods store about lumens versus cp, he said there wasn't a ready conversion that he knew of so that I could compare...but this is Arkansas....
 
I've had a Nite rider 15 watt halogen system since the mid 1990's. Granted, it was about $300 when I got it, but it has held up well and throws out a ton of usable light. It gets soaked and has even been submerged in salt water, and continues to work.

They make a 2 lite system, and since they are designed for mtn biking, handle bad vibration and mud and water very well. All of the handheld lights I have had (Generally the magnum blaster spots with the dinner plate sized reflector work very well until they get a good soaking, then they fizzle out and die.


I have purchased 1 each year for about the last 12 years and they run about $50 or so, they have all failed, where the nite rider light has held up very well and puts out as much light as the 15million candlepower blaster.

I usually put the battery for the bike lite in my breast pocket, and just hold the lite in my teeth but some riders rig them up on their helmets like a coal miner would.
 
Hi Rick. I'd be curious to hear what you think of the Wal Mart lite once you use it. After writing my initial post, I found a page on the MagLite website that talks about some aspects of how light brightness is measured. They too never went near a conversion chart, but did say that the typical LED light is "whiter" that the typical halogen light. Its interesting to hear that you said so also.

Todd, I had never heard of that brand before. The specs on the light are very impressive. I'm still trying to picture you biking while holding the light in your mouth.....

I also looked at lights on the various marine supplier's web sights. In reading the reviews, many of the users of so called marine spotlights are highly dissapointed in the longevity of the various lights sold. There's more to learn here than I had imagined.

John
 
Now, I never said I rode the bike with the light in my mouth... There are handlebar mounts that comes with and a bracket apparatus that allows for vertical adjustments. I can get about 50 minutes of full blast out of it, and the newer ones have all kinds of bells and whistles to conserve power and allow you to add on even more lights.

Go to a good bike store and check them out for yourself, they are bright as hell and throw a beam a really long ways.
 
John,
I have used many of the old style hand held spots like the 1 gajillion candle power ones. And they work. But I bumped into a web site about two years ago called

http://www.candlepowerforums.com/vb/forum.php

I got interested and was thinking about building some custom LED out of my old dead mag light which was my faithful boat hunting companion.
But a hunting trip to TX that involved Hogs and Night Time operations with Bows and Guns made me reconsider.

Long story short I bought a Fenix TK12 which is capable of 280 Lumens.

It fits in my hand and has been in my pocket for a full year now, every day! It rode out a good number of shots clamped to my 30-06 and has fallen into the sea to a depth of 12 feet.
Still doing yeomen work.

I can go up against a deck mounted Jabsco Spot light and kick its butt. I can hang in with a $1000 ACR search light.

It cost around 70 bucks and I use the 123cr batteries sold by the dealer I bought from (Around 2 bucks each, not 18 like at CVS)

http://www.4sevens.com/

I would guess that any light they sell that is rated at 280 or better would work for you.
And I am so in love with that black duck that I will offer to send my light up to VT for a weeks trial to see if you like it and if it works for you.

If you decide to stay traditional marine hand held let me look when you decide which one to see if my Wholesale supplier carries it!

Ill take some pictures so you can see what it looks like.
I have been meaning to do a gear review thing on this light here for a while.

Bob B

(I see the candlepower forum is temp down, but they will be back up)
 
Holy Smokes is there a lot to learn about what I thought was a relatively simple subject, the flashlight...Bob, I looked all through that website you provided the link to, and read a bunch of stuff on that CandlePower forum you provided the link to, and I ordered that 400 lumen flashlight you provided the link to.

Thank you very much for your offer to send me your light. Pointing me in the direction of that web page was a huge help.

John
 
I go to Home Depot or Lowes, they have 1,000,000 candle power rechargeable hand held spot light for $15-$20. Normally get a couple seasons out of them, but at that price, I wouldn't care if I replaced it after each season.
 
John,
my TK12 uses two 123's and I get around 3 weeks out of a pair. This light is in my pocket all the time and I use it at work every day. I keep it on the lowest setting and turn up the power when I need more light to see in dark spots in the boats I work on.
Mine changes power by quick turning the top head area where the lens is. It gets turned on once in a while in my pocket. But as I said I typ. get a good run out of a set of batteries.
The 1 hour on high is accurate if you were to leave it on high only.

If you have any questions give me a shout.

Bob
 
The candela (symbol: cd) is the SI base unit of luminous intensity. It is the power emitted by a light source in a particular direction, weighted by the luminosity function. A common candle emits light with a luminous intensity of roughly one candela.

The SI base unit for luminous intensity is the candela. 1 candela is equal to 1.01936799185 candlepower [old].

There is no real way to convert from candela or candlepower to Lumens.

Otherwise, here's the short (but somewhat deceptive) answer: 1 candlepower = 12.57 lumens. But in order to interpret that statement, you need to understand that candlepower and lumens do not actually measure the same thing.

Candlepower is most useful as a measure of illumination in a particular direction as mentioned above, while lumens are most useful as a measure of total illumination. The conversion above is saying that a light source shining with 1 candlepower in all directions would produce 12.57 lumens.

Imagine you're in a dark room with just a thin beam of sunlight shining through a tiny opening between heavy curtains. That beam represents high candlepower, but modest lumens. You wouldn't want to look straight into the direction it's coming from, even though the sunbeam doesn't brighten the whole room much. On the other hand, a table lamp could brighten the room much more than that sunbeam, even though it's not nearly as bright as the sun when you look directly at it. That lamp represents high lumens, but modest candlepower. See the difference?

If you'd like to know more, have a look at this article, "Measuring Light Intensity":
http://www.energybooks.com/pdf/D1150.pdf

The origin of the factor 12.57 is simple--it's actually just 4*pi. That's also the basis for the number 8% in the "Candlepower" section of the article I cited, because 1/12.57 = 8%.

In my opinion, lumen measurements from trustworthy vendors are good measurements. Candela's can be good measurements. Candlepower is an archaic measurement that is not standardized. My opinion.

Mark W
 
It is all very deceptive. If you are purchasing a LED spotlight, there is no way, no way at all, that any of the LED spotlights will throw our as much light as a HID lamp or halogen lamp. Not possible wiht where LED's are at right now. Adding more LED's does not necessarily increase the lumen output. The design of the reflector, the LED's chosen and a variety of other factors will determine lumen output.

There is/was big arguements in the solid state lighting business about how to measure and report LED output. LED's throw light so much differently than a standarad light bulb that comparing one set of measurements to another made LED's look horrible performance wise. They weren't bad illuminators, it was just that the standard way to measure output was suited to a light bulg rather than an LED. New measurement systems were put i place and I believe standards now exist.

I have the Stanley 5W LED spotlight that works perfectly for my needs. It compares very favorably (light output wise) to a 1,000,000 candlepower spotlight it replaced. The big difference is color temperature of the light. The LED is a cooler white (looks more blue than yellow) and therefore makes green foilage not show up as well as the halogen bulb. For how I use it it doesn't matter but if you were trying to illuminate something 500 yards way and see fine detail, this light won't work for you.

I do love this little light. At $20 (on sale, $30 if not) it fits perfectly. Small, lightweight and lasts for over 1 hour before needing to be recharged, it is a nice light to have.

http://www.amazon.com/Stanley-SL5W09-Watt-LED-Spotlight/dp/B001U04MCG/ref=pd_sim_auto_2

Here is a site (think it was mentioned above) where you can learn all you would ever want to know about lights.

http://www.candlepowerforums.com/vb/forum.php

Mark W
 
Till I started this thread on spotlights, I never imagined there would be so much to learn about light(s). I read the article in the link, some more of the CandlePower forum and went back and reread some of the articles in my gun magazines about tactical lights (which I always breezed through in the past).

Mark, thanks again. Now you have me curious, are you a lighting engineer? Or in some aspect of the lighting field?
John Bourbon
 
Mark, thanks again. Now you have me curious, are you a lighting engineer? Or in some aspect of the lighting field?
John Bourbon
Click to expand...

Nope, I'm a theoretical organic chemist by education. I got into the solid state lighting business out of curiousity. I work at 3M where we have a formal 15% time rule. This 15% time can be used to work on anything that has interest to us job related or not. I was in the marine industry att he time developing various products when I came across a company in Israel who had an electroluminescent product that was round and not flat. That had an interest to me as I could see it used in various industries. 3M at the time owned a company in Arizona by the name of Durel. Durel had the automotive EL business. Long story short, 3M/Elam ended up in a business relationship and I ended up leading the effort within the company. From there, I started to learn more about various other solid state lighting technologies and LED's rose to the top. They were very basic at the time but they had potential. As I was in the Marine group that was under the 3M Transportation Business group, I proposed a lighting business to the transportation group and suggested we take it beyond just marine and include trains, planes, autos, motocycles etc as their needs are all basically the same.

The project proposal was accepted and funded within the company and a formal lighting project initiated. We pulled in experts from around the company and man did we ever have fun! What you may or may not know is that 3M is the world leader in light management. We make hundreds of films/products to manage light out of or into any device. The technology involved is truly amazing. We took LED's and combined them with 3M light management technology and made products that were really cool. Lights as thin as paper that could be made to look like wood, metal, fabric, etc... The auto industry was impressed which led to these prototype products being displayed in/on various high end autos at the Auto show in Germany. From there the products made it into production vehicles and are there today.

Unfortuantely, this time at 3M, IMO, was not conducive to large, outside 3M's comfort zone, projects. The new CEO at the time (former GE exec who loved Six Sigma) was an outsider who did not understand 3M's culture and focused on costs verses new products. The project was killed after a couple of years and the technology we invented was either patented, sold, or kept as a trade secret in case 3M ever wants to do this again.

Six years later finds me in the solar industry working with solar panel manufacturers. Thin film solar panels combined with LED's can improve the live's of millions and I would love to see this company involved in this somehow. Maybe, who knows..... 3M is now getting back into the lighting business and has introduced some interesting products in this area. Hopefully they will take it to the endpoint that some of us can envision and truly change how we see lighting today. I can tell you that flourescents are not the answer. Wait a few years and see where inorganic and organic LED's are at. The industry still has issues on how to remove heat (and other issues) from these high powered little point light sources but the day is coming where this issue will be efficiently/cost effectively resolved and LED's will be lighting many of the things illuminated by incans, fluorescents and halogens today. Once again, my opinion.

Exciting times.

Mark
 
Get this! 2200 Lumens, 720 meter long throwing beam, dual switch system, 7 day run time, 2 modes and brightness levels, uses 4 D batteries. I thought it would be hard to match my rechargable Mag-Light, but this really lights up the night. I got it to navigate on water in remote AK where there was no power for recharge so that a longer run time was desirable. Rechargable batteries are recommended over alkaline.

View attachment IMG000005.jpg
 
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