I have been having a thought regarding intensity in weapon mounted lights. The trend for WMLs (on rifles especially) seems to all be 300+ lumens and I am beginning to wonder if that might be a little much for some situations.
Little bit of background: I currently have a 350 lumen light mounted on my AR. A couple weeks ago, around 3 am, I awoke and was unable to sleep, and took this as an opportunity to “clear my house” in full darkness while having my eyes completely acclimated to the dark. I have a small home (think single-wide) with mostly light-colored walls. What I quickly discovered was that when I quickly lit up a room, the brightness was so intense that it caused me to squint pretty hard. This got me thinking that perhaps my light is too powerful (at least for my needs).
Jump forward to last night I did some experimenting. I taped a streamlight stylus pro (100 lumens) to the handguard of my AR pistol, turned off the lights, and checked a couple rooms. This seems like more than enough light to easily make a positive ID out to about 25 feet (well over the longest line of sight in my house) and it doesn’t hurt my eyes with excessive splash-back. Currently I am considering fabricating a mount to attach this light to the front sight tower, but wanted to make sure I wasn’t off my rocker before proceeding. The questions I am having are:
Do you find that there are situations where bright is TOO bright?
Is there anything to this idea that I am overlooking?
Any potential negatives that I have not thought of?
Little bit of background: I currently have a 350 lumen light mounted on my AR. A couple weeks ago, around 3 am, I awoke and was unable to sleep, and took this as an opportunity to “clear my house” in full darkness while having my eyes completely acclimated to the dark. I have a small home (think single-wide) with mostly light-colored walls. What I quickly discovered was that when I quickly lit up a room, the brightness was so intense that it caused me to squint pretty hard. This got me thinking that perhaps my light is too powerful (at least for my needs).
Jump forward to last night I did some experimenting. I taped a streamlight stylus pro (100 lumens) to the handguard of my AR pistol, turned off the lights, and checked a couple rooms. This seems like more than enough light to easily make a positive ID out to about 25 feet (well over the longest line of sight in my house) and it doesn’t hurt my eyes with excessive splash-back. Currently I am considering fabricating a mount to attach this light to the front sight tower, but wanted to make sure I wasn’t off my rocker before proceeding. The questions I am having are:
Do you find that there are situations where bright is TOO bright?
Is there anything to this idea that I am overlooking?
Any potential negatives that I have not thought of?