How many lumens do you need on weapon mounted light?

[Byron]

Ok I am sick and tired of the whole blinding you shit, excuse my french but blindess is a permanent thing not a temporary thing.

OK. I guess it's fine for you to believe that words mean different things, but no, the term "blind" is not restricted to a permanent state.

Flash blindness is visual impairment during and following exposure to a light flash of extremely high intensity.

Flash blindness is caused by bleaching (oversaturation) of the retinal pigment. As the pigment returns to normal, so too does sight. In daylight the eye's pupil constricts, thus reducing the amount of light entering after a flash. At night, the dark-adapted pupil is wide open so flash blindness has a greater effect and lasts longer.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flash_blindness

Also the omg white walls and bright flashlights thing is stupid.

Cool - I must be stupid then, as I have indeed given myself flash blindness from the splashback off a white wall. Please teach me to be smart, because I have yet to find a way to consciously control my retinal pigment.

[JHC]

I've run into the splash back from 200 lumen and didn't like it but didn't find it debilitating. My light on the pistol at night is for speed ID before shooting in a narrowly defined scenario i.e. I need it before I move 10 feet and hit key switches that light up the downstairs, stairs and upstairs hallways like daytime. I see no advantage to stalking with a weapon mounted light through a dark house alone; when an assailant wants to hide in the dark and ambush me. He wants dark. I want light. At that point; I guess I'd side with more power to light up knooks and crannies.

[BobLoblaw]

I have an x300 and an x300 ultra. I live in a small apartment with white walls and have used my alarm clock for response drills in the middle of the night with both lights. I have light sensitive eyes and always have a pair of polarized sunglasses if it's sunny. I have experienced no "backsplash" effect. If you experience this, you are using your weaponlight incorrectly indoors. Momentary on/off while cornering or "slicing the pie" will not produce this effect. Any light will make you see spots if you put your face and light close enough to a white surface. Having said that, if you see spots from the refracting light do you think a home invader can see anything while in the path of the light beam?


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[Shawn.L]

Southnarcs Armed Movement In Structures coursework would change A LOT of the opinions in this thread re: Lumens, and strobe.

Maybe Im burnt out on internet discussions, but Im no longer very interested in going around and around trying to convince by logic what really should be learned from experience.

All I can say is if you havent used your techniques and equipment against real live adversaries who can think, move, and act on their own with a desire to defeat you then perhaps your opinions shouldnt be so strong. Im not interested in what technique, gear, or insights anyone might have without knowing WHY they feel that way and what experiences led them there. And since I dont personally have the wherewithal to lay mine out here I wont presume to speak with any authority on the subject.

[karmapolice]

Any light from a full sleep is going to cause some "flash blindness" but I do not have issues when I am actually able to sleep during the night like a normal person and get woken up in the middle of the night. Also when I sleep during the day which is most of the time and I wake up from deep sleep to the sun blaring in my room as I do not have black out curtains I do not suffer from "flash blindness". Also 99.9% of peoples home have a lot of ambient light going on from electronics to other sources including street lamps outside. Everybody thinks 500 lumens is like looking into the sun but a standard incandescent 60w bulb = 840 lumens. The average paddle fan in your room has at least two, omg that 1680 lumens, do you go "flash blind" when you turn your bedroom light on in the middle of the night with the white walls. The area where I work is a very dark area its not a neon light city area, there are plenty of times I go blacked out in my car to inside a small house with white walls using my weapons light, or from being in deep thick woods and relying on the ambient light from the moon and or whatever bleed off from other light sources to going inside structures and searching them. Like I said in the bottom of my post take it for what it is an opinion, if it bothers you I am sorry but again it is my opinion and experience, if I see the light some day and realize I was wrong, i'll be the first to admit it and will take any chastising.

[JMS]

I'll take a DoN BUMED reference over anything Wikipedia has to say in terms of assigning a correct medical/physiological definition. I know that Wiki isn't the user-changeable thing of the past, but it's STILL the USA Today of reference material.

Blindness is a permanent effect, even if it's not a complete cessation of one's ability to see SOMEthing. If one is not using the internet and engaging in day-to day navigation via 1) Braille, or 2) a white cane and a dog with a roller-bag handle attached to its harness, or 2) after a sudden need for glasses that can practically see into the future after a particular event created the need to don such....one is not now, nor has ever been in any way blinded.

Magazine/clip; not the same things. Such it is with the difference between blinded and dazzled/impaired/ocularly interrupted (welcome to the world of light-based nonlethal capability sets); related/not the same. Wanna say "blinded" when talking about taking one in the face at 10m from a 250 mW laser with an NOHD of 1.4 kilometers, that turns your aqueous to hard-boiled egg-white before it has a chance to so much as touch your retinas, rock on. Wanna say "blinded" regarding some puny polychromatic light source measured in mere lumens, fine, just don't try to fit yourself for a halo over being too :internetcool: to use it correctly.

Shawn nailed it. The only way to be certain of one's light-sensitivity to different intensities to any degree of certainty is to get out there and LEARN it. It's gonna be different to different folks from a sheer physiological standpoint, which is why thinking max-possible lumens is moar bettah! is shakey, at best. I'm somewhat photosensitive and have damned good nighttime acuity, so just to add yet another wrinkle to things, the shape of the beam of of greater note to me than how much juice it's pushing. Thankfully, the manufacturers of note have figured this out BEFORE they started going gonzo (stipulated: at user demand) over raw light output.

Hence, I prefer to frame it in terms of "no less than."

Handgun, no less than 100 lumens, so that puts it at things like the CT LightGuard and Streamlight TLR-3 or similar. To push to 25m, outdoors, the 170 lumen X300 is a good beam (I like the DG switch, so SF it is...). More than that...I define that as the user having identified a specific need.

Carbine or other longarm, no less than 200 lumens, on the presumption that one anticipates needing usable light out to 50m outdoors. A SF G2X Tactical (meaning, single-mode switch, no freaking Rubik's Cube switchology...) in any one of several Impact Weapons components mounts (depending upon which forend you have on which to mount a light) will do that without breaking the bank for an AR; remote-switch Y/N is a combo of personal judgement and how much room on the forend you have. KISS rules. Shotguns...I know that there's options, but I'm not up on those capabilities and defer to others morfamiliar with those guns (pretty sure there's an 870-specific setup thread in Long Guns that may serve as a primer). More light than that, we're again talking about a specific identified need....

...which brings us back around to not knowing how to identify said specific needs ARE until one has shaken the concept out.

EDIT: Aha...! http://pistol-forum.com/showthread.p...uty-grade-spec

Carbine options: http://pistol-forum.com/showthread.p...ight-placement

[Zhurdan]

As with everything gun related, know what YOU need/want and actually practice with it.

+200 is too much for me, could work great for others, but I tend to have issues even driving at night with oncoming headlights.

I've often taken the slide off my pistol or taken the bolt out of my AR and ran a few scenarios in my house. No formal training, I'm itching for the day I can make a low light class.

[Byron]

I'll take a DoN BUMED reference over anything Wikipedia has to say in terms of assigning a correct medical/physiological definition.
...
Blindness is a permanent effect
...
Such it is with the difference between blinded and dazzled/impaired/ocularly interrupted (welcome to the world of light-based nonlethal capability sets); related/not the same.
...
Wanna say "blinded" regarding some puny polychromatic light source measured in mere lumens, fine, just don't try to fit yourself for a halo over being too :internetcool: to use it correctly.

I really can't even believe this is still a matter of discussion. I'm not trying to be "internetcool" or "tactical" or anything of the sort.

Make as much fun as you want of the term "flash blindness," but it isn't just used on Wiki, nor is it in any way recent; it can be found in plenty of medical sources.

Would a peer-reviewed national medical journal satisfy you?

The Journal of the American Medical Association - 1963
Study of Photostress and Flash Blindness
http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article....icleid=1161177

Or if you really want to insist on it coming from a military source, then so be it. They actually specifically referenced this "controversy" back in 1967:

...[this symposium] concentrated upon the temporary degradation of vision caused by bleaching of the visual pigments, such as rhodopsin and cyanolabe, chlorolabe and erythrolabe, and the effects that may follow that bleaching. Several people have indicated their dislike of the use of the term flash blindness in this connection, feeling that it is not real blindness, but only a temporary lowering of visual sensitivity; however, a better term has not been suggested.

Proceedings of the U.S. Army Natick Laboratories
Flash Blindness Symposium
Armed Forces-National Research Council Committee on Vision 1967
http://books.google.com/books/downlo...7_beNiwrPcQPpQ

Please give those researchers a call and let them know that their 1967 symposium was trying way too hard to be "internetcool" and that they're only allowed to utter the word "blind" when referring to braille readers.

As for your contention that such terminology should only be used when referring to 250 mW eye-melting lasers? CAPT Matthew Rings (Chief, Aerospace Ophthalmology - Eye Clinic, Naval Aerospace Medical Institute) apparently disagrees with you. In his presentation for the 2013 United States Naval Aeromedical Conference, note his references to the risk of flash blindness from a 5 mW laser. You'll further note that the range for flash blindness risk is beyond the range for eye hazard, suggesting once again that this term is in no way relegated to melted eyeballs, but rather refers to a temporary phenomenon that doesn't require any damage to the eye.

[Sparks2112]

I really can't even believe this is still a matter of discussion. I'm not trying to be "internetcool" or "tactical" or anything of the sort.

Make as much fun as you want of the term "flash blindness," but it isn't just used on Wiki, nor is it in any way recent; it can be found in plenty of medical sources.

Would a peer-reviewed national medical journal satisfy you?

The Journal of the American Medical Association - 1963
Study of Photostress and Flash Blindness
http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article....icleid=1161177

Or if you really want to insist on it coming from a military source, then so be it. They actually specifically referenced this "controversy" back in 1967:

Proceedings of the U.S. Army Natick Laboratories
Flash Blindness Symposium
Armed Forces-National Research Council Committee on Vision 1967
http://books.google.com/books/downlo...7_beNiwrPcQPpQ

Please give those researchers a call and let them know that their 1967 symposium was trying way too hard to be "internetcool" and that they're only allowed to utter the word "blind" when referring to braille readers.

As for your contention that such terminology should only be used when referring to 250 mW eye-melting lasers? CAPT Matthew Rings (Chief, Aerospace Ophthalmology - Eye Clinic, Naval Aerospace Medical Institute) apparently disagrees with you. In his presentation for the 2013 United States Naval Aeromedical Conference, note his references to the risk of flash blindness from a 5 mW laser. You'll further note that the range for flash blindness risk is beyond the range for eye hazard, suggesting once again that this term is in no way relegated to melted eyeballs, but rather refers to a temporary phenomenon that doesn't require any damage to the eye.

Remind me to never argue with you.

[JHC]

Remind me to never argue with you.

Nice.