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Large Rechargeable Torch Recommendations Please

C

Copperjacket

pfm Member
Good morning

I need to buy a large high output rechargeable torch and am looking for recommendations please.

The main use at this time of the year is walking the dogs: black Labradors on a black night in muddy dark woods etc. Something that can last at least an hour without a drop in performance would be ideal

Unfortunately head torches while great, have too narrow a cone of light.

Many thanks
 
I am a VERY long way from any artificial light of any kind every day for 6-8 months of the year and very seldom use a torch. They are completely unnecessary in 99% of circumstances, they just restrict your vision to the area lit by the beam. Don't use one and your eyes will be perfectly good enough for most things, even on moonless nights, on moonlit nights you can almost read a newspaper without artificial light, you can certainly read headlines.
TBH, people meandering all over the place restricted by the lit area from their torches, drive me nuts, especially when they blind me with them.

I do carry a torch though, for when I drop something or for detailed/delicate tasks for which I do need light. I have used countless torches over the years and would only ever use a standard battery torch, but with a stock of rechargables these days. Best brand these days - Maglite. If you want a beam rather than a floodlight, which I do, buy an incandescent version, NOT an LED one. I use a torch that takes two AAA cells - WAY good enough.
 
get some night vision goggles

get some LED collars for your mutts. My neighbor has a black lab, and she has an led collar from it.
 
Vinny said:
I am a VERY long way from any artificial light of any kind every day for 6-8 months of the year and very seldom use a torch. They are completely unnecessary in 99% of circumstances, they just restrict your vision to the area lit by the beam. Don't use one and your eyes will be perfectly good enough for most things, even on moonless nights, on moonlit nights you can almost read a newspaper without artificial light, you can certainly read headlines.
TBH, people meandering all over the place restricted by the lit area from their torches, drive me nuts, especially when they blind me with them.

I do carry a torch though, for when I drop something or for detailed/delicate tasks for which I do need light. I have used countless torches over the years and would only ever use a standard battery torch, but with a stock of rechargables these days. Best brand these days - Maglite. If you want a beam rather than a floodlight, which I do, buy an incandescent version, NOT an LED one. I use a torch that takes two AAA cells - WAY good enough.
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Funnily enough I was going to respond in a similar way, as I also find that I can see a lot less when using a torch than when not using one. I use mine for a couple of muddy places and clearing up the dirty dog eggs. However my better half is practically blind in poor light so it depends on your own eyesight. Also when walking in woodland the natural light is reduced further, obvs.

I can't stand Maglites as the three I've had have eaten both batteries and bulbs.
 
Vinny said:
Best brand these days - Maglite. If you want a beam rather than a floodlight, which I do, buy an incandescent version, NOT an LED one. I use a torch that takes two AAA cells - WAY good enough.
Click to expand...

Maglite are OK but not the best any more I don't think, I like Lenser. I am a little puzzled by your incandescent preference as beam shape is determined by the optics not the source.
 
Your peripheral vision is far better in low light, so half the knack is in relying on that, not trying to see clearly what you are looking directly at.

This last spring I tried to find some rodding woodcock (they do this mating flight after dark in the main). We walked a good half mile through woodland and out onto rough pasture, along a wide unmade path. The moon was poor and it was a night of fleeting clouds anyway. We needed a torch not once and both of us saw the tawny owl glide between tree-tops, across the path, some 20-30 feet up.
 
cutting42 said:
................ I am a little puzzled by your incandescent preference as beam shape is determined by the optics not the source.
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In effect, it depends on both - source and optics. Optics only work well for point sources, unless you get VERY complicated optics. Incandescent approximates to a point source. LEDs are a million miles from point source so you cannot get a tight beam with LEDs. A simple fact of physics - stick a piece of white-hot tungsten at the focus of a parabola - job done..
 
Battery life on two AAA’s isn’t great, but....

49198344911_aa909652c0_o.jpg
 
ks.234 said:
Battery life on two AAA’s isn’t great, but....
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They last me for at least 10 hours, probably over 20 hours walking/working in the dark. Using rechargeables it doesn't really matter, even if they die while I am out, I very rarely use the torch anyway.
 
When you say 'large' I guess you mean 'bright' . Look at LEDlenser https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B074TZXC73/?tag=pinkfishmedia-21

We got one of these mainly for safari where I could quite happily use it to photograph a leopard in a tree. But use it all the time at home. It's wonderful - very bright, nice compact size (pocket size, really) and focusses from wide to narrow (about 80cm at 10m distance). It charges from USB and charge seems to last for ever for our use anyway. Nice weight metal body too.

I guess you can get brighter / bigger ones but this is plenty for me.
 
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Not large, but bright...
I use a Nitecore TUP and a lanyard. USB Charge, VERY bright. 1000 lumens.
Got mine from aliexpress for about £20 in the summer, but it took a while to come. Having just checked amazon they want crazy money for the same thing.
 
Vinny said:
In effect, it depends on both - source and optics. Optics only work well for point sources, unless you get VERY complicated optics. Incandescent approximates to a point source. LEDs are a million miles from point source so you cannot get a tight beam with LEDs. A simple fact of physics - stick a piece of white-hot tungsten at the focus of a parabola - job done..
Click to expand...

Hardly a million miles and an incandescent is not a strict point source either, it is a filament of length and dimension. I have been lighting theatre stages for much of my life and beam shaping is a big part of it. The move to LED has been a godsend for its constant intensity across the beam as well as colour management and major power savings. The old incandescents were very variable and you could even see the filament projected - Arcs were amazing tho, now that is a point source! I digress a little but IME for a handheld flashlight there is no discernible difference in the source for beam shaping.
 
My LED light gives a VERY even light across the beam whether focussed wide or narrow. It’s impressive. The cut-off at the edge of the disc is nicely graded too - not too sharp, but still well focussed to a very nice disc of light.
 
cutting42 said:
Hardly a million miles and an incandescent is not a strict point source either, it is a filament of length and dimension. I have been lighting theatre stages for much of my life and beam shaping is a big part of it. The move to LED has been a godsend for its constant intensity across the beam as well as colour management and major power savings. The old incandescents were very variable and you could even see the filament projected - Arcs were amazing tho, now that is a point source! I digress a little but IME for a handheld flashlight there is no discernible difference in the source for beam shaping.
Click to expand...

There speaks someone who has never looked closely at lamps (leave alone designed them)......

Unless an arc lamp is a short-arc lamp, no, it isn't a point source, no more or less so than incandescents designed for focussing. An arc lamp produces an arc between two electrodes and even in short-arc lamps that is a very few mm - about the same as filament length in a torch lamp.

Granted battery life for LED torches is considerable, but they die almost instantly, once the voltage hits the 1.whatever needed to operate the LED at all. Incandescents just get dimmer and dimmer - far more convenient in my books.

LED lamps are great until you compare to good incandescents. Unfortunately lost now, and long since out of production, but I used a Tekna torch for many years - 4 x AAA batteries and that would put a tight, evenly lit spot of about 3-4 feet across over 100 yards away.

Horses for courses - the answers here seem to be from those people who wish to floodlight acres whenever they go out, which I, personally, think should be illegal, especially when they walk along or close to roads, with not the very slightest thought for anyone else, not least drivers on the road.
 
Do you have a cordless drill?
Some drill manufacturers offer torches that use the same batteries.
I've got a Makita 18volt drill that came with 2 nicad batteries and I bought the matching torch (also for dog walking) and it's very good. It has the advantage that by keeping one battery on the torch, which is used regularly, and the other on the drill, used from time to time, when the torch starts to get dim I rotate the batteries and recharge the flat one and the batteries, being regularly flattened and recharged, are still going strong after 12 years or so.
 
gintonic said:
Which I assume some of which is now spent heating the theatres now......?
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I am sure there must be an impact but it will be far outweighed by the massive reduction costs in high current dimmer racks and associated wiring. A modern theatre LED fixture is around 10% of the current with equivalent brightness. I am by no means at the cutting edge of current theatre lighting technology but old lighting systems needed to deliver many hundreds of dimmable 10amp plus circuits all around the theatre stage and FOH. Now they just need 1amp regular mains supply and a DMX512 control signal and that's it. It has transformed small theatres, schools and church hall lighting as well. Anyway, getting distracted here.
 
Vinny said:
There speaks someone who has never looked closely at lamps (leave alone designed them)......
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I never claimed to design them but I have looked a plenty of lamps theatre and otherwise. Here is a little example of a 1000W filament tungsten lamp I used to use a lot.

cp77_1024x1024.jpg


And compared to a modern 160W (equivalent output)

relite-hd-768x756.png
 
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