Man-Portable Photon Projectors

Shortly after getting interested in urban exploration, I began acquiring some of the essential “tools of the trade”. Given that urban exploration frequently happens at night, underground, or in otherwise dark surroundings, a good light source is just about essential. Technology has progressed impressively in recent years, and some of the best deals in man-portable photon projectors (i.e. flashlights) today would have been unthinkable five years ago.

Then, the king of the hill, in my book, was the Mini-Mag, which is nigh-indestructible, produces a goodly amount of light, and runs on commonly-available, inexpensive batteries. Today, it’s still a good flashlight; a new lens in front of an highly-efficient LED makes it an even more attractive tool. By that point, though, you’re looking at close to $30 for your upgraded flashlight. It’s worth it, in my opinion, but there are better deals.

About a year ago, this flashlight hit the market in a big way. Known as the “Elly”, it’s a remarkably inexpensive, remarkably powerful 1AA flashlight built around a no-name 1-watt “star” LED. As people quickly discovered, the “Elly” is eminently upgradeable with a variety of Luxeon Star, Cree, and Seoul LEDs, among others. (These are the latest generation of high-efficiency, high-output solid-state light sources.) I upgraded one, for example, with a Luxeon I (SWOJ bin) and have happily used and abused it as my primary exploration flashlight since this spring. A huge, useful amount of clean white light, and almost four hours on a single rechargeable AA battery is hard to find fault with - especially for a total investment of less then twenty bucks. The popularity, in particular, of adding then-new P4 Crees to this body led the importer to whip up an improved version, with better reflector, better lens, and pre-installed Cree emitter.

My personal preference is for a modestly-sized light with an useful amount of light - a wide beam is preferable to one with a lot of “throw” - that runs on inexpensive, widely-available batteries for a decent amount of time. Yes, all those expensive, trendy status-symbol keychain lights are impressive, but they either don’t produce enough light to be useful, go through batteries too fast, use uncommon or expensive batteries, or are awkwardly sized: too large to fit comfortable in a pocket, but too small to put on a belt. In all too many cases, several of the above. User-serviceability is also a big plus; the Streamlight Pro-Polymer, Streamlight Junior, and numerous Pelican lights are absolutely awful in this respect. Huge amounts of light are a lot less useful than you might think, for the circumstances explorers find them in; A Stinger or other “tactical” flashlight in a steam tunnel, for example, is really very unpleasant. (Don’t get excited by the term “tactical”; all it really means is “black”.) So it is that, for me, these nigh-indestructible little chinese lights are pretty much perfect - and cheap enough that it doesn’t particularly bother me when a friend, say, drops one in the river…

Well, in the last couple months, technology has moved on once again, and there’s now an even newer version, offering more of the same in a better-built package. If you need a flashlight - or know someone who might - this, in my opinion, is the best $11 you’re going to spend, period. Wickedly bright, tough as nails, and runs for hours on a single AA; what’s not to like?

Yes, for not a whole lot more, you can get an even more powerful light, but I recommend against it. This is for two reasons: One, it’s way more light than you really need in most circumstances, and two, there are a lot of hidden costs associated with something like this, all in the batteries. If you want to go with rechargeables, you’ll be looking at at least forty bucks more, assuming you go with quality batteries. No, stick with something that takes AA batteries; they’re inexpensive, you can get them everywhere, and everything uses them. (Slightly bitter voice of experience: AAA batteries suck, especially in flashlights, where they are generally made to do the job of an AA battery, but with a third the capacity. Whatever you do, don’t be stupid enough to buy a flashlight or headlamp that uses three of the damned things; you’ll either always have one too few replacements, or always carry too many and have a weird number left over that you can’t do anything with.)

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