Emitter Types

The heart of an illumination tool is the light emitter. If this component is just average, the entire illumination tool - no matter how well-made - is just average. Depending on the usage requirements, incandescent lamps, high-intensity discharge (HID) lamps, or light-emitting diodes may be used.

LEDs

A light-emitting diode (LED) is a chip of specially fabricated solid material that emits light when electricity flows through it. Since LEDs function for thousands of hours, have no filament to burn out or break, and waste little energy producing heat instead of light, they are ideal for many illumination tool applications. But they differ greatly in color, efficiency, and assembly quality. High spec illumination tools use LEDs that deliver the maximum in all these areas. Even more performance can be gained from them by electronically regulating battery current to control the output, runtime, and quality of the light produced.

Incandescent Lamps

Although LEDs offer advantages in terms of efficiency and variable-output capability, there are still reasons to choose an incandescent illumination tool. Incandescents produce a warmer light that tends to portray color in a more pleasing and realistic manner, a fact appreciated by professionals who require the highest degree of visual accuracy - including industrial inspectors, forensic specialists, and photographers. Also, Incandescent emitters produce infrared light, allowing special operations customers to pair them with an infrared filter for use with night vision devices. In contrast, white-light LEDs do not produce enough infrared light for such applications.

High Intensity Discharge (HID) lamps

A single compact high intensity discharge lamp (HID) can produce thousands of lumens of brilliant white light, many times the output of an incandescent lamp of comparable size and power consumption. Harnessing this flood of photons in the form of a flashlight puts astounding illumination power in one hand. HID lamps generate light from a plasma arc, a region of superheated metal vapor confined in a quartz glass capsule. Since they have no filament to burn out or break, HIDs are extremely resistant to failure from shock and vibration and can last for thousands of hours. They require a more complex power source compared to other light emitters, but for reliability, efficiency, and sheer power, HID illumination tools deliver.