2005 to 2017, An older “Flashaholics” Retrospective

zespectre

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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!
 
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ven

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Agree, its an awesome time to be a flashaholic, so much choice.....................Now you can pick your driver type, LED/s choice, temp and tint........almost endless.

Good to see you around again:)
 

Tachead

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Welcome back:welcome:

You must have missed out on all the great regulated LED's lights back in the early 2000's. There were many great lights from Surefire, Pelican, Pentagon, Emissive Energy Corp.(Inova) etc. using the Luxeon 3 and 5 back in 2005. They put out 80-120+ lumens and some were flat regulated with crazy runtimes compared to incans. They were amazing lights for their time and a sign of the exciting things to come. I miss those days too. Those lights amazed normal people as generally only flashaholics had even seen lights so bright and small. Now, you can buy lights that output several hundred, or even thousands, of lumens at Walmart. Oh, how things have changed:shakehead.
 
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Yes, Sir. You must have a look at Master VinhNguyen54's (Sky Lumen) two newest offerings. The MT35vn is equal to the Titanium Innovations L35 HID in lux throw, and nearly twice the lumens output, from a single LED. He has done it! The moment has arrived.
 

zespectre

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Welcome back:welcome:

You must have missed out on all the great regulated LED's lights back in the early 2000's. There were many great lights from Surefire, Pelican, Pentagon, Emissive Energy Corp.(Inova) etc. using the Luxeon 3 and 5 back in 2005. They put out 80-120+ lumens and some were flat regulated with crazy runtimes compared to incans. They were amazing lights for their time and a sign of the exciting things to come. I miss those days too. Those lights amazed normal people as generally only flashaholics had even seen lights so bright and small. Now, you can buy lights that output several hundred, or even thousands, of lumens at Walmart. Oh, how things have changed:shakehead.

Thanks, good to be back.

Oh I remember the Surefires, Pelicans, and so forth, but they were still pretty niche at the time, the mainstream crossover didn't happen for another couple of years and even then took some time to gain full traction. Now as we say, there is just a VAST ARRAY\to select from and it's GREAT!

Though oh Gods it's amazing how the crap stuff is even worse garbage than what we used to get and I didn't even think that was possible! (LOL)
 

LeanBurn

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If it's any consolation, although LED's have wonderful outputs and run times, they have progressed to better tints and CRI, but they still can't match the perfect CRI and tint of the "hot wire" incandescent bulb.
 

Enderman

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I remember back when people were complaining about hitting a "brick wall" at 1Mcd and wondering when we were going to start seeing more crazy LED throwers.
Now we've passed 4Mcd and shooting for more :)
 

Capolini

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I remember back when people were complaining about hitting a "brick wall" at 1Mcd and wondering when we were going to start seeing more crazy LED throwers.
Now we've passed 4Mcd and shooting for more :)

I understand what your saying but that is NOT a traditional flashlight throwing 4Mcd!

I could not carry that on a hike w/ Capo and I !:laughing:
 

Paul6ppca

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Who remembers the Fenix L 2p with Nekomane body?

Wish I had kept that one.

Great thread. It has been quite a ride for us old timers. I still hope to hold or even own McLux Pd one day:)
 

iamlucky13

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That was interesting to read. I was ignorant of all this back then. I liked my Maglites, and that got me by.

When LED's became affordable, I bought a few over years. In some uses the cheap LED's were better, and in some the old Maglites were better. In all cases, I just used them because I really needed light.

I didn't know about and wouldn't have been willing to pay for higher quality lights like Surefires.

Ultimately, though, I got fed up with my lights never being better than barely adequate, and sometimes not even that. That led me to this site and a deep appreciation of how much flashlights had improved while going largely unnoticed by most people.

I also, when digging back, found a lot of the community aspects like pass-arounds and hints of the way members on this site influenced the new products coming on the market with their tinkering and testing.
 

AMRaider

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Who remembers the Fenix L 2p with Nekomane body?

Wish I had kept that one.

Great thread. It has been quite a ride for us old timers. I still hope to hold or even own McLux Pd one day:)


I don't know if I count as one of the old timers, but it is certainly enjoyable to reminisce. One of my first lights was a Mini-Mag incan that ran on 2x AA. It was plenty bright (for the time), but only when the batteries were fresh. After that, it turned that dull orange before fading out completely. Sometimes (often) the Krypton (or Xenon) bulb would burn out, but thankfully it came with a spare bulb in the tailcap! Machined out of Aluminum, o-ring sealed, and super smooth threads, it always felt like "high quality" in the hand.

Some years later, one of my friends in school had a Surefire Z2 (P60 incan) which ran on those fancy Lithium batteries (CR123) you used to only see in cameras. I could not believe how bright it was (and it would stay bright instead of rapidly fading thanks to the CR123 lithiums), and it was only slightly larger than the Mini-Mag 2x AA. Fast foward a few more years and you get the 3W Luxeons. About as bright as the Z2, but would last longer with considerably less heat.

I spent some time away from CPF, and now that I'm back (for a bit anyway :)), it seems LEDS have taken off both in popularity, power, and efficiency. LEDs are so commonplace today, they generally won't turn any heads, but I still remember the eerie cool white glow of the the 3W Luxeon back when they were new. And yes, I had one of the early Fenix lights (3W Luxeon, L series, I think) with the Nekomane CR123 body :). What an awesome little light.

Of course, it's more than just the LEDs; the electronics, materials, and manufacturing have come a long way as well. And we now have a huge selection of different brands (including custom brands) to choose from (From my childhood, I can only remember Maglite and perhaps a couple other brands). It certainly is a good time to be into the hobby.
 
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Modernflame

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I remember toting a 6P original on night shift with the confident assurance that, at 65 lumens, I held the brightest and most reliable personal sized flashlight in the world. In those days (pre 2005), it was true.

A few months back, I fired up the old P60 hot wire for nostalgia and it looked nothing like I remember. So weak! Funny the way memory works. The way I remember it, I used to kick the darkness in the teeth with my high output, two cell incandescent device.
 

zespectre

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I remember toting a 6P original on night shift with the confident assurance that, at 65 lumens, I held the brightest and most reliable personal sized flashlight in the world. In those days (pre 2005), it was true.

A few months back, I fired up the old P60 hot wire for nostalgia and it looked nothing like I remember. So weak! Funny the way memory works. The way I remember it, I used to kick the darkness in the teeth with my high output, two cell incandescent device.

Hell yeah... or then you got the 120 lumen upgrade... and it sucked down batteries like Dracula would have gone through the Miss America pageant.
 

Hooked on Fenix

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I remember those days. From around 2000 to 2005, at best we had second generation Nichia l.e.d.s with the bluish tint or Luxeon I l.e.d.s with the light color lottery. My first l.e.d. headlight was a Princeton Tec Matrix headlight which cost around $40 and had a l.e.d. module probably less than 15 lumens and an incandescent module that was brighter but burned through batteries fast. If you used lithiums with the l.e.d. module, the l.e.d.s were permanently about half as bright after that despite claims that it could run on lithiums. That came out in 2000. We had Photon flashlights, but they were only a few lumens and many didn't have a constant on setting. The first decent available l.e.d. light in my opinion was the Inova X5. In 2006, things started improving. We got the Nichia CS l.e.d.s that worked great in headlights like the Princeton Tec Quad headlight. We also got first generation Eneloop batteries after several awful batches of 2300 to 2700 mAh AA NiMH batteries that failed well before 50 charges. Maglite made the Luxeon 3 l.e.d. popular around 2007 when we could finally have a reasonably cheap light over 50 lumens. Then came the Luxeon K2 l.e.d. that broke 80 lumens but used a lot of power. The game changer was the Cree XR-E l.e.d. that was twice as efficient as a luxeon l.e.d., around 80-100 lumens a watt. When Fenix came out with lights light the P3D, P2D, L2D, and L1D, it changed things a lot. You could now safely go backpacking a week with one light and no spare batteries with a pocketable light up to 200 lumens at 3 ounces (P3D Q5). After that, it was just incremental improvements in efficiency (from 100-200 lumens/watt), better batteries (2100 charge 10 year shelf life Eneloops, Li-ion, Li-polymer), better color rendering and light quality, (90+CRI with choice of tint), and more feature options.
 
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