ryanandty wrote:Cool. A few questions if you don't mind: When compared to the cool light, would it be better for spotting animals at night, how's the color rendering, and is the 7% app. output drop a bother?
At the 200 (I can't recall the exact output) this thing puts out, the 7%drop is no issue for my uses.
As for the spotting animals, my Search and Rescue "specialty" happened to be mantracking, ie visual detection of ground disturbances caused by human passage. My training and experience suggests that "warmer" lights work better than "cool" for color rendering and detail finding at night. That said, I was dealing with close targets on the ground, not long distances. Other SAR members who were tooling around w/ new cole-blue LED lights found that they could be obscenely bright, but didn't have much "throw" to distant targets. YMMV
On candlepower forums you'll find people talking about "throwers" versus "floods". that probably has more to do w/ lens and reflector and it's not my forte.
This Quark, I will say, has a nice spill to it while chucking the light out there. I haven't used the "neutral" beam for tracking yet, as I've kinda fallen out of SAR due to school and marriage. I'll have to try it one day, tho.
Oh, and just for reference, the recommended "tracking" light according to the Joel Hardin, founder of Universal Tracking Services and now Joel Hardin Professional Tracking Services is (or was, when I was active) a plain ol' yellow rayovac 2-d flashlight commonly found at WalMart. The bulb casts a very gentle, diffuse yellow light that kept our eyes from burning out.
(for more info:
http://www.jhardin-inc.com/ )
