Recomend me an LED light...Please

[suertetres]

Ok, I think i'm ready to make the jump from incan to LED. the only LED i have is a photon II on my keychain.

Here's what i'll be using the light for. Camping, fishing, hunting. if it were water resistent/proof taht would be great!! I wouldn't mind using it as my EDC either, or leaving it in my truck. I currently use a G2 for all of the above and the light it provides is great, but am looking for led for burntime and battery use. I've seen a few surefires that have caught my eye, what do you guys think would be best?

thanks in advance.

 

[voodoogreg]

not my fav but big light for the $$$ yep,, the nuwai Q-III.

 

[edison]

I concur. For camping/fishing/hunting the Q3 is an excellent choice. Being a fairly small single cell light it can be clipped to the bill of a baseball cap leaving both hands free.

Surefires are great; but in this particular category I'd trade the greater reliability/water resistance/higher cost of the EL1 for the excellent spill light offered by the Q3's reflector without hesitation. Mostly because I would use it as a headlamp quite often.

 

[enLIGHTenment]

A Q3 is good for just under an hour of runtime. If you need any kind of light in the woods at all, you really should be carrying a light that will run at least overnight, just in case you wind up in a situation where you really need light.

I'd suggest a UK 4AA eLED or Inova X5. These lights will run for ten and twenty hours, respectively. Other options include an Inova T2 (5h runtime) and Streamlight Propolymer Luxeon (3.5h runtime); either of which should be carried with at least one set of spare batteries.

 

[Beamhead]

Surefire E1L with FO4 Beam shaper. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif

 

[Trashman]

My recomendation would be one of the 5-watt Luxeon flashlights made by Nuwai. I haven't seen a Q-III, but with all the positive CPF feedback regarding them, I'm probably going to be buying a bunch to give as Christmas gifts for family. I have a Nuwai 5-watt Nitestar and the light it puts out is incredible, although the one I have, the 3 - cr123 version, is either really hard to find or no longer available. I must have dropped mine 20 times onto concrete in the 18 months that I've had it and it has never failed me (I always forget its in my jacket pocket when I reach down to pick something up and it falls out). The ones I seen on ebay now can all be had less than $75. I see amondotech has a buy-now for under $70 for the one with 3 levels of brightness, and a buy-now price of $57.50 for the single level one. The one I have is a single level light. I would say if you're on a really tight budget, the Q-III would be good, but if you can afford the 5-watt, I wouldn't hesitate to buy it, it's an outstanding bargain. (they both are)

 

[clays]

I do a lot of the same activities, and have just completed the perfect set of lights for the job. My wife and I each have an Infinity Ultra (Gerber and CMG) led light which provides ample light and extremely long run time (as in days), and I recently added a Surefire L4 to the mix to complement. The L4 provides the massive flood of light very useful if you want to really light up an area, and the L4 is still a very tiny light that's easy to take in a pocket. The ideal pair, for me.

 

[dda]

I recently purchased a 3c cell 3w from leadbeam.com It has a very bright tight beam as well as a lot of spill and very good run time. Check out the review on it at flashlightreviews.com

 

[suertetres]

Thanks for all the good information. I appreciate it. I'm looking at getting 2 flashlights, an inexensive blue led for blood tracking and an one for edc and to use for camping, hunting fishing. Does anyone know about this Gerber Recon light?

it looks fairly solid.

 

[nerdgineer]

For a blue LED light, you might try to get a Dorcy 1AAA for $6 from walmart and swap out the LED. It drives a typical white (and I presume also a blue) LED at 50-60 mA and will run 3 or so hours to 50%. Very reliable despite low cost.

FWIW, the same light with or without a 26 Kmcd LED in it makes a very useful EDC (but better with).

 

[tracker870]

For camping, my son uses a UK 4AA eLED, and I have an A2, plus a UK 2AAA eLED that clips on my cap.
RE: the Gerber Recon, it's an ok light. When you use the color filters, though, it's really only useful for very close work.

 

[ACMarina]

The Recon is basically an Infinity with a head containing filters. I haven't tried one out, but it should be about the same quality as the Infinity. You are going to lose light as it is filtered, which isn't something I'd go with. I'd go with a bag of Countycomm keychain lights, if they're available in blue. If not, I'd guess that somebody can put a blue LED in there for you pretty quickly for just about nothing.

If I were you, for a nice camping/hunting/fishing light, I'd look to Princeton Tec or Underwater Kenetics. But I generally end up in the water whenever I leave the house, so I like most of my lights to be water resistant at the very least. I'm thinking that one of them will have something that will run on those old 123 cells that won't light up your G2 anymore. I use an old Inova X5T for those, and it works to 6 feet (at least it has for me. .)

 

[markdi]

some one makes a 2 stage switch for the q3
then you would have a low power long runtime option for the q3.

 

[flashlite]

An alternative to the Gerber Recon is the LED-Lenser/Coast Cutlery 4 color LED light (seen here) . It has 3 white, 1 blue, 1 red and 1 green LED (not a filter) and each color is independently controlled by a separate switch. I have the dual color version (5 white LED's, 1 red LED) and I really like it.

The link above indicates that this light only has 1 white LED but most of the other links that I found say that this is a "6 chip" light. IIRC, there are 3 white LED's.