Your Flashlight Passion: How did it start?

I've searched the forum and found some related threads on this topic but most are over ten years old so I figured to start a new one to hear more from current active members. What's your story on how this all started? Most here will admit their interest in flashlights is odd and most in society do not understand. A flashlight is a tool for most people akin to a hammer, vice grips, a drill, etc. so what made them special to you?
I briefly shared my story in my very first introduction post here back in 2014. While I'm a relatively new member here with few posts, my passion for flashlights goes back over 20 years. Here's my (long-winded) story:

In the summer of 1994, I was 11 years old and our family was moving from Australia to Japan. On our way out, we vacationed in New Zealand. There, I saw a Maglite Solitaire for the first time ever and thought it looked cool in its all-metal black body. I hadn't seen an all-metal flashlight of that size before and given it was priced within something I could afford with my allowance money I saved up, I bought it. Little did I know in the months that follow, my new gadget would be called into duty and forever make an impact on me.

On January 17th 1995, the city of Kobe, Japan experienced a catastrophic earthquake. Kobe also happened to be the city we moved to in Japan. The earthquake hit at approximately 5:45 AM so it was dark when things started shaking. I vividly remember the circular movement of the quake and that it wasn't just side to side. I recall my body lifting up and hitting the ground repeatedly as I was brutally awaken from my slumber on the tatami mat floor. After what felt like at least 20 seconds of the violent shaking, I recall my parents yelling for my brother and I to make sure we were alright. Fortunately, everyone was unharmed but the apartment was a mess. Things were all over the floor, including all the dishware that fell out of the tipped cabinets and shattered onto the dining room floor. Being an unprepared family, we did not have any emergency supplies, including functioning flashlights, save for the tiny Maglite Solitaire I had bought months before in New Zealand. Immediately after the earthquake, I took out my tiny Solitaire and it was the one and only flashlight my family counted on in the confusion of the darkness immediately after. It was paramount in making sure we got around the debris safely and checked on various things. We relied on it until we later bought other flashlights and the electricity was eventually restored. To this day, my mother recalls the tiny flashlight that showed the way through the darkness.

In the few years that followed, I became interested in flashlights because of my Solitaire in the earthquake. When I visited the United States on vacation, I once again spent my allowance on flashlights. I acquired a Maglite 4C flashlight and also a 6D flashlight. I recall the perplexed look on my dad's face when I carried the jumbo-sized Maglites to the counter at Walmart. Not long after, I discovered Surefires and Streamlight Scorpions as they sat in glass cases in an outdoor goods store in Japan. They were very expensive with import mark-ups but being the determined teenage flashaholic, I saved up and eventually bought both a Surefire 6P and a Streamlight Scorpion. It was also around this time in my mid-teenage years that I got into camping and airsoft with my friends so the Maglites, Surefire, and Scorpion came into use. I used the Maglite 4C and Scorpion as my flashlights for camping and nighttime airsoft while I kept my Surefire and Maglite 6D as more of novelty items. I can say as a teenager with these flashlights, I was the "flashlight guy" among my friends, outshining anything they had. They were also useful given the mountains of Japan often have wild boars that come out at night. We'd use the flashlights to light them up when we heard them.

In 1999, I moved to California, USA and despite moving to a mountain community where street lighting was a rarity, my interest in flashlights waned. It was probably because I was more interested in driving... and girls. However, I brought all my flashlights from Japan to the US and they sat in my room as a dust-covered collection other than for the occasional brown-outs from heavy snowfall in the winters. When I moved to college, I took some of the flashlights with me.

In 2003, I again faced another disaster. It was the year in which Southern California faced a major wildfire outbreak in every county. In the San Bernardino Mountains, a wildfire started by an arsonist called the "Old Fire" burned from the bottom of the mountain up to about 6,000 ft in elevation, taking out most of a little mountain community called Cedar Glen. Cedar Glen happened to be where our family had our house and it burned down. Again, we were able to survive unharmed and evacuate the most important of our possessions. However, I regretfully didn't expect the fire to actually burn down our house and didn't make sure to pack all my flashlights. I later realized I had lost my Maglite 6D and my trusty little Solitaire to the fire. My Maglite 4C, Scorpion, and Surefire were fine as they were in my college apartment in Orange County.

After graduating college, I moved to Washington DC for an internship and ended up there for the next decade. With all the new things in life, flashlights took to the back burner and I lost my Maglite 4C in the move. However, I always had my Surefire and Scorpion nearby. By that time, the Scorpion was non-functional but the Surefire was working.

In the December of 2013, my obsession with flashlights was reinvigorated much like a dying person comes to life from a jolt of a defibrillator. My brother was getting married and I was his Best Man. As a groomsman's gift, he gifted me the best flashlight he could acquire at a Sports Chalet, remarking that he wanted to get something worthy of me as a "flashlight fetish man" or something to that effect. It was a Fenix TK15S2. At the time, I wasn't even aware of the brand or that LED flashlights had come to take over the industry given my interest in flashlights had dimmed out like one running out of batteries. Coincidentally, the Bachelor Party consisted of an offroading/camping trip back into the mountains we once had our house so I picked up two CR123As for my all-new Fenix before heading up the mountain. Once night fell at the campsite, I tried out my new Fenix and my jaw damn-near hit the ground. I, along with my friends and brother, were amazed at how bright and how far a handheld flashlight could throw a light. Keep in mind that at the time, the pinnacle of flashlight performance in my mind was still stuck in the 90's with my incandescent Surefire 6P. Seeing the LED performance of the Fenix TK15S2 was a revelation.

Not long after, I signed up here and I got 18650's for my Fenix along with a multi-bay charger. I then got another Fenix; an E11. I also got an LED head for my Surefire 6P. Having got a bunch of free primary CR123As and CR2s from work, I added a Foursevens Mini MLR2 to my collection. Since then, my collection grew, reinvigorating my passion for flashlights. However, it wasn't just about collecting for me given my earthquake experience and the many memories of adventures while camping as a teenager. The restored passion brought back nostalgia of good times and the appreciation for making it through the tough ones. My new collection also itches at me for new adventures and I have taken to night hiking on a regular basis, carrying and rotating through at least 3 flashlights on each hike. I'd have to now agree with my brother that "flashlight fetish man" is a fitting moniker and here I am today.

What's your story?

Great story. You should go back to WalMart and buy another Solitaire.



Through my work I needed a brighter flashlight one night. Out pops this fellow with one about the size of a 2D Mag but bustin' out about 500 lumens.

Like a moth drawn to a flame, that was it for me. Then I discovered this place and my life has been a mess ever since. Who'd've ever thought there was a world of flashlight junkies lurking inside my smart phone?

Mine was pretty simple. I bought the SkyRC MC3000 charger for other stuff when it came out. As it happened, the big MC3000 thread was here. Easy transition.

Good question,,,,,simple answer w/ a picture of the gentlemen who got me started!

The day I got him 3.18.2011

In his element.

I started off w/ a SIPIK type light 6 years ago and quickly progressed to MODDED lights. Mostly V54 and OSTS lights. This was before I hiked on a lot of trails and was on some back roads. People were not paying attention so I got more and more powerful lights! I have 2 lights that go 1 mile!

I now strictly stay on hiking trails. We average 7.44 miles/day......Not a lot for people who exercise. But it adds up.

CAPO is my Huskies name. He will be 7 the day after Christmas. So far we have hiked over 15,000 miles and should surpass 24,900 by June of 2021 which is ONE lap around the world!! :thumbsup: ...I have a thread on that!

For the people that get tired of me, you can blame CAPO for me finding CPF and ALL the great torches!

My dad was a policeman so when I was a kid and he had his Maglite at home I was impressed with the light it put out. I followed him into the same career path but by the time I was using an incandescent Maglite for work technology had well and truly marhced on. I started accumulating (and getting rid of) lights trying to find a useful one for work. I had a Surefire G2 that I bought soon after graduating but CR123As were almost impossible to find in Australia and I wasn't going to constantly pay $10 per battery.

I discovered Led Lenser at an outdoor shop and the AAA accepting P7 was my duty light for a few years. I liked the zoom function and I had unlimited access to AAA batteries. When we were issued weapon lights for the first time (Streamlight TLR-1) we were also given a small one AA torch to keep on our belts. I was impressed that something so small could still put out a decent amount of light.

Earlier this year I decided my Led Lenser P7 still wasn't cutting it. I started to do some research. Through Google and a few ads in our union journal I discovered Wolf Eyes and bought my first properly powerful light. 1000+ lumens, easy mode selection, rechargeable (Australian approved charger!) and with a distributor in Sydney in case anything went wrong.

My internet browsing brought me to CPF, YouTube videos and to the flashlight world beyond Maglite/Led Lenser.

My father once worked in a gold mine as a teen ager, since he was very sickly, his job is to charge the battery of the headlamps that the miners were using. When he went to saudi arabia as an ofw he brought along with him 2 very cool flashlight at least for me, one is rechargeable with a very strong magnet and the other one takes 2 d sized batteries that is meant to be used in a highly flamable workplace. Both of which are incandescent lights both of which introduced me to the love of flashlights. When i saw a key chain light being sold by energizer i was impressed so i bought several and gifted it to mu staff, later on i discovered LED lights and the cpf community and that started it all.

I forgot to mention that I have 35 lights. About 12 EDC and the rest are TRAIL Lights that I have a rotation set up for. I average 3 lights a night,sometimes 4. This includes my Keychain light an Ultratac K18 SS that can take any AAA battery. I use the 10440 Efest IMR.

As I type this I am anxiously awaiting[OUT FOR DELIVERY!] my TK75vn QUAD SST40 Shaved dome 7500 Lumens/420Kcd! :twothumbs

Great topic, and I do get to occasionally post briefly about it, since it does pop up anew in various forums in various slightly modified guises on occasion.

I spent most of my life bedeviled by old fashioned flashlights that frequently failed to turn on when needed. Usually switch failure and circuit contact failure. Then came sturdily built alkaline fueled large size incans for security personnel. One day, three years ago, I decided to search the internet for High Performance Flashlights. Not being too adventurous, I stuck with results from Sears. Contained therein, was the Four Sevens MMU-X3. I latched onto it and the single bay 26650 charger and two additional spare batteries. It proved to be the most exciting thing that I purchased in many years. It lit up my life. It always turned on when I turned it on, and it did not turn off in mid use, and it was very bright, and it had very nice build quality and nice power/size ratio and very nice beam profile. I had zero trouble instantly adapting my taste to the cool white, from years of warm incan.

I loved it, and I google searched for more. That landed me on this forum, and to Selfbuilts' mesmerizing review of the Niwalker MM15. I read the review thoroughly many times, each time the excitement of such a hand-held floodlight increased exponentially. I was absolutely amazed that an average person could actually get such equipment in his hot little hands. I excitedly purchased from the friendly folks at Going Gear. It set my life ablaze. I wearily wended my way through each day, knowing that when night arrived, I would have my daily excitement.

Next, the Meteor came out. When it sank in that GG was not going to carry this stellar item, I searched and found Vinh54. He has supplied me with plenty of high performance items, including Acebeam items way before GG started to finally carry them.

I have retained all 18 lights that I acquired. None of my family or friends or acquaintances have shown even a tiny bit of excitement that I have for high performance hand held LED lights.

For me, currently, the outer limit is the X65. I get excited often, when I often walk around at night in my hilly residential neighborhood with two of them, one in each hand. I will probably gang up three of them before its successor that surpasses it materializes.

I'm guessing that the more time spent outside and in the country as a child, the greater the ingrained love of reliable, portable illumination.
I grew up in the city but spent a lot of weeks, weekends, and summer months on the grandparents farm as a kid.
Building fires, roaming around in the dark and nursing, tapping, whacking, nearly dead incandescent "flash" lights (kinda bright for a few seconds) was the regular state of affairs.

[I also read pulp sci-fi every night with bad incandescent flashlights til 3-4am every morning and slept through high school, developed a technique of sleeping with head on hand, elbow on desk, pencil in hand, that probably didn't fool anyone but since the teachers were by and large going through the motions as well, did the trick. Passed due to being good at cyphering the dysfunctional, multiple choice, standardized tests]

First great light was a maglight solitaire, first mod was cramming the pins of a 5mm led into the bulb holes. - before that, first crawling, tube cave that was discovered out of the blue, and explored on the spot, used the incandescent solitaire and a plumbers candle... mostly used the candle, to save the solitaire's battery... the 5mm led mod came later.
The purchase of a red single AA Infinity Ultra that ran a week on one AA, and made a pop from the built up gases of the vented battery when it got so dim that I changed it, that was the real candlepower revelation for me, that led (pun intended) to the solitaire mod, and to the brief obsession with Surefire, and then the discovery of the community at CPF, followed by the nine month agonizing and waiting for an HDS order, and the reading and playing catch up to get with 18650 battery tech, and then the discovery of Zebralight, and then sad resignation to sell the lovely HDS due to philosophical disagreement about the pricing of 18650 tubes, and then BLF...
Now the future is wide open.

...I just looked btw, and HDS wants 418$ for an 18650 battery tube, black, 200 lumen Hi CRI, flush button, sapphire lens light, ...with 58$ pocket clip...
I know, I know, the incredible quality... it's simply incredible.
I'm ordering another Emisar D1vn.

I don't like the dark..at all. I bought a 1980's Rayovac 2D flashlight with my news paper money for a caving trip as a youth. Plastic, somewhat rugged...but I now had power over darkness. Somehow it got lost shortly after, I hate losing things.

I bought a Maglite 2D as a young father, thought that I needed a quality light that I would depend on for the rest of my days. After all people had been using them for almost 20 years reliably in many professions, so the $30 was spent on professional grade. It got used intermittently (as a result had a near miss with alka-leaks) as needed through the years. It was all I needed or wanted really, never failed me and always lit upon a click. ~30L was it.

I saw a friend had an LED flashlight in mid-late 2000's and thought that it was cool, but hated the light color. I didn't think LED would take off anyways so I held on to tried and true incandescent.

Fast forward to 2015 and LED's started getting better color and design. The battery life is and size are what really pulled my attention to them but what to buy? I remembered that I was already a member of CPF for car lighting and that there was a section for flashlights....and how funny it was that people could talk about flashlights. I ventured over to the Flashlights section of the forum and that was it. My family thinks I have a passion for flashlights...but really they have no idea what passion/obsession is in comparison to most on CPF. It is one of the first tools I pack when going anywhere.

It started with this when my coalmining grandad let me play with it.

It didn't get "scientific" til I found this forum.


WOW.




Calcium carbide lights are awesome!
We didn't use them for serious purposes, but my dad always had a few, and he still does, along with enough calcium carbide to make me nervous when I check in, but he keeps it all sealed and dry, so it's all good.

Great story. Thanks for posting that.

As for myself, I was always interested in flashlights ever since I got an old Ray O Vac 2D light decades ago when I was around 10 years old. Then some years later Maglites and Pelican lights and Krypton and Xenon bulb lights hit the scene and I was in heaven.

quinlag said:

It started with this when my coalmining grandad let me play with it.

It didn't get "scientific" til I found this forum.


WOW.




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I just read up on this light....very cool...I would love to see the beam pattern on that light with the super polished mirror reflector.

I'm legally blind and have no low-light vision at all, hence the need for good flashlights.

When my 1W and then 3W Led Lensers were no longer sufficient, I researched my next step up and came across Fenix lights. Google searches for more information on Fenix brought me to CPF. I owe most of my technical flashlight knowledge to CPF - most importantly, I learned about neutral white, high CRI and Li-Ion cells here.

Applying that knowledge has let me get a lot more out of my lights, but I'm still on a continuing journey to get the best match possible between my flashlight and my eyesight...

It became "serious" with a Coast zoom light. I think Coast lights often serve as a gateway light to a more serious addiction.

I once paid very good money for a Coast light, no modes and ran on 3 AAA, I actually sent it to the electronics recycling center.
Every other light I either still have, or have given away, or else lost before the chaos of adolescence ended.
Boo to Coast, and Lenser... for not sharing their zoom aspheric patent if nothing else, never mind their prices and inability to innovate.

pageyjim said:

It became "serious" with a Coast zoom light. I think Coast lights often serve as a gateway light to a more serious addiction.

Click to expand...

Same here. HP7 was my first Coast and it still comes out to play

at times like this...
Dense fog, lots of ambient light from heavy equipment and a dump truck driver needed to see that tree branch because an overhead wire ran through its branches.
The zoomy was perfect.

Great thread, I've read all of your stories.

I only got into lights this year. I was at an outdoor store last Christmas looking for a gift for a group exchange. I've heard it said that you should buy what you want, as someone else is probably interested in the same thing. I headed over to the light aisle and saw the Maglite Mini Pro 281 lumen model. I wasn't sure what that meant, but since I'd never owned a led light I figured it was probably brighter than what I was used to. There was another customer there who was super enthusiastic about the Fenix lights also on the shelf. He tried to get me to buy one, but it was more than double the price of the Maglite and I was already at my budget. I also didn't understand what was better about the light.

Well, that conversation stayed with me. It didn't take very long for me to start researching online which got me here. I intended to buy one light and I've just ordered my fifth and given several as gifts. I've also learned a ton.

Many years ago I also had a 2 million candle power spotlight and 150 mW laser pointer. I guess I've always had an interest that has only just recently been realized.

Come to think of it the seed was probably planted by my grandpa. When I was a boy he always had flashlights around. Cheap, low output, plastic lights. But they were always there and he always gave me one to play with. I remember the pride of going on a trail walk while camping and being one of the people with their own light. He's now long gone and I didn't realize that connection until this thread made me think of it. Thanks for posting it!

bykfixer said:

Great story. You should go back to WalMart and buy another Solitaire.

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It's funny you mention that. After my intro post when I first signed up here, Archimedes replied the following:
"If you have a US address, I will send you a M@g Solitaire ... just PM (message) me, after you have 3 posts on the forum here "

I never took him up on it given it was a generous but unnecessary offer, but seeing that made me know I was in the right place to share the flashlight passion.

It's great seeing all the other stories.