zespectre
Flashlight Enthusiast
After another long absence from CPF I've been lurking again for a while and it has really got me thinking about where we've come in the 12 years since I found this group. This retrospective is part nostalgia for us "old timers" and also to give some perspective to those who are newer to the world of high quality illumination tools.
To start with, twelve years ago "Hotwire" (Incandescent) was king. It had all the advantages of brightness, throw, and color. By far the vast majority of lights being produced were "hotwires" of some sort and if you wanted a "real" illumination tool it was going to be incandescent because the (at the time) brand new field of "Light Emitting Diode" lights was in its infancy and the few "big boys" of lighting only worked in incandescent. Even then only a small handfull of flashlights could cross over the 150 Lumens mark and that was considered a serious powerhouse. The LED stuff topped out at about 30 Lumens max and most were in the 10 lumen range... seriously!
The LED based lights were rare, dim, had odd colors from blue and violet to a puke green and were prone to some severe color shifts over the course of their life. They basically had the sole advantage of run-time with manufacturers making insanely outrageous claims about how long their lights would stay lit (hey, a dim glow barely visible at the end of your arm was still "lit" right?)
Lights were, with rare exception, single stage/single function and very few had regulated output; in fact a regulated light was cause for much conversation. There were no ANSI/NEMA standards and therefore no uniform way of rating flashlight features/functions. We pretty much had to invent our own "standards" (many of which came from this forum) in order to make any meaningful comparisons.
In general your purchasing options were cheap drug-store crap or very expensive limited run and "bespoke" work and very little in between and if you were willing to spend more than $45 on a light (and admit it publicly) you were pretty much written off as "nuts" because who would spend that much on "just a flashlight".
As for power, alkaline batteries were still king though CR123 existed as a rapidly growing niche. Rechargeable NiCAD was on the way out and NiMH was maturing fast and LION was in the prototype phase. The idea of protected cells was just catching on and protected cell prices were just starting to drop into the reasonable price range. Those of us building custom packs would include all kinds of directions and warnings about how to charge them without critical failures.
Oh and the chargers. We were basically just getting past the point where a charger was little more than a power hookup that might or might not have an "off" timer. Digitally controlled "smart" chargers wouldn't show up for another couple of years and even the first versions of those were pretty crude and unreliable. These forums had a LOT of discussions about accidental destruction of batteries by mis-charging and some of them were pretty spectacular!
So here we are now. I admit the "old codger" part of me does miss the "Wild West" aspect of the early days where someone with a computer, a camera, and a bunch of batteries could create a "Flashlight Museum" and be taken seriously. It was both shocking and FUN to discover you were considered enough of a subject matter expert (or occasionally THE subject matter expert) that companies like SureFire along with various start-ups would contact you and/or send you samples to review (which happened to me a LOT).
We were a tight enough group and special lights were rare/expensive enough that we used to do "pass-arounds" where someone would buy a light and we'd ship it all around so multiple people could get some hands-on/eyes-on time with it and I don't think anyone ever actually lost a light doing so.
Of course times change, the group has grown and technology continues to improve so that now we have such a sheer variety of lights in all sizes, styles, and price ranges, with features and functions we never DREAMED of back then so, on balance, it's a pretty awesome time to be a Flashaholic!
To start with, twelve years ago "Hotwire" (Incandescent) was king. It had all the advantages of brightness, throw, and color. By far the vast majority of lights being produced were "hotwires" of some sort and if you wanted a "real" illumination tool it was going to be incandescent because the (at the time) brand new field of "Light Emitting Diode" lights was in its infancy and the few "big boys" of lighting only worked in incandescent. Even then only a small handfull of flashlights could cross over the 150 Lumens mark and that was considered a serious powerhouse. The LED stuff topped out at about 30 Lumens max and most were in the 10 lumen range... seriously!
The LED based lights were rare, dim, had odd colors from blue and violet to a puke green and were prone to some severe color shifts over the course of their life. They basically had the sole advantage of run-time with manufacturers making insanely outrageous claims about how long their lights would stay lit (hey, a dim glow barely visible at the end of your arm was still "lit" right?)
Lights were, with rare exception, single stage/single function and very few had regulated output; in fact a regulated light was cause for much conversation. There were no ANSI/NEMA standards and therefore no uniform way of rating flashlight features/functions. We pretty much had to invent our own "standards" (many of which came from this forum) in order to make any meaningful comparisons.
In general your purchasing options were cheap drug-store crap or very expensive limited run and "bespoke" work and very little in between and if you were willing to spend more than $45 on a light (and admit it publicly) you were pretty much written off as "nuts" because who would spend that much on "just a flashlight".
As for power, alkaline batteries were still king though CR123 existed as a rapidly growing niche. Rechargeable NiCAD was on the way out and NiMH was maturing fast and LION was in the prototype phase. The idea of protected cells was just catching on and protected cell prices were just starting to drop into the reasonable price range. Those of us building custom packs would include all kinds of directions and warnings about how to charge them without critical failures.
Oh and the chargers. We were basically just getting past the point where a charger was little more than a power hookup that might or might not have an "off" timer. Digitally controlled "smart" chargers wouldn't show up for another couple of years and even the first versions of those were pretty crude and unreliable. These forums had a LOT of discussions about accidental destruction of batteries by mis-charging and some of them were pretty spectacular!
So here we are now. I admit the "old codger" part of me does miss the "Wild West" aspect of the early days where someone with a computer, a camera, and a bunch of batteries could create a "Flashlight Museum" and be taken seriously. It was both shocking and FUN to discover you were considered enough of a subject matter expert (or occasionally THE subject matter expert) that companies like SureFire along with various start-ups would contact you and/or send you samples to review (which happened to me a LOT).
We were a tight enough group and special lights were rare/expensive enough that we used to do "pass-arounds" where someone would buy a light and we'd ship it all around so multiple people could get some hands-on/eyes-on time with it and I don't think anyone ever actually lost a light doing so.
Of course times change, the group has grown and technology continues to improve so that now we have such a sheer variety of lights in all sizes, styles, and price ranges, with features and functions we never DREAMED of back then so, on balance, it's a pretty awesome time to be a Flashaholic!
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