Wow, this flashlight is *bright*!

WRT several mentions of “warm white” vs. “cool white”, night vision, eye damage, etc. …

A while ago I picked up a very cheap pack of 3 small penlight-style LED flashlights on a whim while getting something else because I thought they’d be useful around the house. They’re very small and the barrel is just big enough to hold the two AA batteries that power it.

There is a warning not to shine them directly into your eyes and man, for those it’s a warning worth heeding. The light is bluish-white and I think the package itself warns that they’re high in UV light. I can’t really use them as utility flashlights because even a short exposure to the light, even at a distance, leaves me seeing afterimages for quite some time. If I need a flashlight to work on something, I’ll use my 2-cell, 3-cell, or 4-cell Maglite with ordinary bulbs – even the bright 4-cell causes no such issues. These things I just keep around for emergencies.

I’m sure that’s not the case with all or most LED flashlights, and some are even rated as “warm white” similar to a filament bulb. Just something to keep in mind. A filament bulb just glows, but with LEDs, you don’t necessarily know what frequency spectrum they’re emitting.

This was on old British sports cars with generators.
When you turned the landing light on you didn’t look at the amp gauge, it would scare you.
A single landing light* would illuminate a reflective road sign at about 2.5 miles. At just under a mile the reflection of that road sign got REALLY bright. I mean like stupid bright.
But for long drives on dark as hell country roads it was the bomb.

  • I had a buddy mount two on his car, they were just too bright, he took one off.