I am looking for such an all purpose household torch at least 2 Million CP , internal rechargeable battery. (appearance not important - conventional torch or lantern type)
There are any number of them available - does anybody have any real no-nos or recommendations
I used to have a Dragonlite at work. Its main disadvantage was that it held a charge for about 20 mins use, then switched itself off without any warning :-(
I had a similar one, that had a similar charge, I remeber a guy that had one to go "lamping" with his dogs which lasted for hours but it cost over =A3100
Sommat like this might do
Costco do a 15million CP lamp similar in design to that one but larger in size. I've had mine for 2 years and where I live we have no lights other than the farmyard. It has a 1/2 power mode, like a dipped light on your car headlamp which is plenty powerful enough for most jobs and will give an hour plus. The main beam can illuminate stuff for up to maybe a mile or more but only lasts for about 30 mins. The good thing is the battery (sealed lead/acid) is replaceable through a small door so in theory, you could put in a higher capacity battery (the one supplied can't be super quality for the price) from Maplins or wherever.
Price I paid was £18 plus VAT. I highly recommend it.
We got one from Aldi at the start of the year (under =A38) - it's the
2=2E5 million CP one. Made in Germany, a 6volt 55W H3 tungsten-halogen with a lead acid battery, in-car 12v Cigar lighter cable and domestic mains charger. We were impressed, but the battery does dip off suddenly if you use it for long periods (~20mins maybe). Understandable given the amps the bulb must draw!
I've got one from Homebase which is 3.5M CP. It's 12V and very powerful with a long spot beam that hits easily twice the distance of my Passat full beam. BUT charge lasts about 1 min. max. (It used to do about 5 mins when new.) Useless. I'd guess the ones that use a decent powertool battery are the best bet, like a Dewalt or similar. Al
What's _their_ definition of candlepower?
;-)
IIRC, a lumen per steradian. This is not utterly unreasonable. It's all in the beamwidth. Round numbers. A 55W halogen bulb will put out about a thousand lumens. This means that you need the output beam to be 1/3500th of a steradian (a cone of base angle of around 60 degrees), or around a degree.
This is quite achievable - you just need a large reflector.
In practice - if it actually hits the nameplate figure - it'll probably only do it in a small spot, within the overall moderately dimmer beam.
In reality - I have a '2 million' candlepower one. A quick measure put the brightest spot - that has maybe 50% of the light, at around .5m/10m, which'd come out around 200000 candlepower.
(a longer distance might give a slightly better result - but that'd mean going outside and waving large torches, which gets you looked at funny.
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