omon

with all due respect, you guys are using wrong led flashlights.
i,ve been experementing with leds way before led flashlights became common place.
not all leds created equal, let alone led flashlights.
there are regular 3,5,10mm leds, i mostly(and manufacturers too) use 5mm leds, tipickal brightnes of single one (modern) is 18000mcd, first ones were(that were strong enoughfor flashlight) 3400mcd,
there are more and much more powerfull ones on the market today, such as luxeon star, cree. they come in 1,3,5,7.10 watts, 1 watt is as bright as 15-20 5mm 15000-18000mcd leds,(depending on manufacurer),
unlike bulbs that make light by heating filament, leds have flat surfice that creates light, so simple reflector that works great with inc. bulb isn,t efficient, (some new leds have specially designed domes, that relect light from flat surfice to make it something like a filament, to work with reflector), other way is to use collimator, it works as a lens, and project beam farther than led without collimator, they focus light much as reflector in inc. light works.
the best collimator is made by frensel lens principle, they have higher loss, but if used with 5watts and up leds, the loss in neglegable.
leds with no callimator or reflector are floodlight, and with those things, are spotlight.
about 5 years ago i converted 15-20 years old searchlight with old 5600mcd leds, it is very bright,(95 leds) few years later i bought 128 leds model, even brighter, recantly i bought luxeon led light with reflector.
my conversion and 128leds are awesome flood lights, it can fill a large room with even (no dark spots, rememder maglight) and if you look at the leds, even for a sec, you will see leds even if you close your eyes for few min.(burns retna but temp),
the one with reflector shoots nice even beam as far as regular 2d-c maglight, blue thou.
so there are cheap, shitty led flashlights, and there are very good ones, i think in 5 -10 years there wont be inc flashlights, not sure about halogen searchlights(1-15 million cp), the only inc flashlight i have is 3 million cp serach light,(overkill for 9 out of 10 cases) so far leds cant compeate with those lights in terms of brightness, yet.
as for color, it depends on voltage, my yellow light is overdriven at 4,5v, its color the same as inc. but high voltage does kill lifespan(i think normal is 11000hours, even if i kill it by half, it is ok), the rest do have blue tint , some more some less.
pic. the yellow light i converted myself, the rest are bought.

sorry for hijacking the tread, but i don,t think it worth opening a new tread for 1 post.

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