Ainsley from the forums was kind enough to offer his custom built P7 Mag for a passaround several months back. He sent it to me, and it sat in my room for quite a while (sorry). I tried it out with alkaline batteries, and while it looked good for a single LED, I knew the P7 was capable of much more.
My excuse for the long delay is that I was waiting two of those months for some NiMh D batteries that I ordered, but I am retarded and forgot about a very obvious solution. I used a set of Eneloops in D adapters, and the results were awesome.
Here are the shots at a wall about 20′ away:
Stock 4 x D Maglite, fresh alkaline batteries:
Here is the P7 Mag with 3 of the alkalines from the stock Mag:
And here is the P7 Mag with those Eneloops:
BOOM!
That’s a hell of an improvement, huh? I’m glad I hung on to it long enough to test it with some NiMh batteries, because I was kind of bummed about how it performed with alkalines. I was expecting something along the lines of my HID, and did not get that until I popped in the Eneloops.
Here are some more shots, this time up in the air at some trees maybe 100′ away. Luckily, the weather around here thinks we are in Seattle, so there was plenty of humidity in the air from all the rain to help flesh out the beams.
Pretty neat, huh?
Warning, flashlight nerd speak ahead. Avoid if nerd speak causes nausea or indigestion.
Some technical notes:
-The P7 pics on the brick wall are actually slightly color adjusted, since they did not accurately represent the colors that I saw. These shots are awfully close to what the actual colors were, so you can see how nice a P7 can render colors. The three air shots are all at the same white balance.
-First shot is a 4 x D MagLite with fresh alkalines at ~1.56V each, with a fresh bulb. The light is actually brand new also, so everything is fresh. I didn’t have an unmodded 3 x D Mag to compare to the P7 Mag (again, sorry).
-The Eneloops were fresh of the charger at ~1.4V each.
-Brick wall shots were shot in full manual, f5.6 1/10.
-Air shots were also in full manual, f5.6 1 sec.
-Both sets were ISO 800.
-The Mag beams were focused as tight as I could get them.