Sorry for the lack of news updates. My life has just been boring lately I guess. :P So for those of you who don't know, I like flashlights. What?! Flashlights? Well, I've always enjoyed a cool gadget. Growing up I always liked gadgets like graphing calculators, Swiss Army knives, digital watches, etc. I can't say why, maybe it's in my genes. My grandfather and Uncles are engineers, my father is into HAM radio. I grew up playing with old radio equipment, electronic parts like resistors, transistors, LED's, etc. I have always found electronics interesting. As far as flashlights I never really had an obsession with them, but as a kid they were always fun to play with. Growing up a flashlight was a flashlight. Some were a little brighter than others. Usually they were plastic, large, bulky, and contained some kind of incandescent bulb. I remember when I was in high school my friend found a Maglite and boasted about how good they were. They can be run over by a car, thrown out of a car window, etc, and still work. Later in life I discovered the flashlight company Surefire, which makes tactical flashlights for the military, police, etc. I purchased a Surefire E2e, which uses two CR123 batteries, and produces around 65 lumens. At the time I was amazed at how much light was coming out of such a small flashlight. It was brighter than my big 3D Maglite. Fast forward to a couple years ago and I came across the Fenix P1D-CE. This LED based flashlight, half the size of the Surefire E2e, was putting out 135 lumens on a single CR123 battery. It seemed hard to believe, but sure enough, it was brighter than my Surefire E2e, using far less battery power in the process! It was this leap in technology that started my fascination with flashlights. It was more to do with the LED in the flashlight and being interested in the advancements in LED technology.

This led to me coming across a topic on a flashlight forum (yeah, there is a whole website/forum dedicated to talking about flashlights) where you could enter a Photoshop contest where you could win a custom made flashlight. Like anything else out there, there are people who make custom flashlights. Like a custom motorcycle, they are considered works of art by flashlight enthusiasts, collectors, etc. One of these custom lights is the Gatlight, made by a company called Lumencraft. These flashlights are too expensive for me to consider buying. The Gatlight is made from many custom machined Titanium parts. Titanium alloys have gotten expensive and they are hard to machine. So when you combine the cost of materials, machining, labor, etc, the Gatlight comes with a $495 price tag! That's one pricey flashlight, but when it comes to custom flashlights, it isn't the most expensive around. I have seen some custom flashlights bring $900 or more!

So I entered the Photoshop contest almost two years ago. The contest went on, and on, and on. The company took their time bringing the contest to an end. Finally, a couple months ago, they got around to selecting the finalists and set up a site where people could vote on the entries. I ended up winning ! Turns out there weren't many entries, there wasn't much competition, and there weren't very many votes in the end.

So I was lucky enough to receive a Gatlight for winning their Photoshop contest! Here is a photo I took of it.

UPDATE: I guess I should include a link to the company's site, which has the details about the light: http://www.lumencraft.net/GatLightTI.h tm

The cool thing about it is you can turn a knob on the back to control the output, from ultra low, to ultra bright. :) Like a dimming knob.

More pics: http://picasaweb.google.com/wadefulpng /Gatlight#