Holding The Sun In Your Hands

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Portable Scene Lights From Streamlight And Olight.

Sometimes police work involves sneaking around in the dark, especially for patrol cops and deputies. Darkness and stealth have their benefits when you’re trying to catch someone stealing batteries from cars, ripping off copper wire from a construction site or crawling through a window where they don’t belong. Yes, we need good handheld lights to do our job, write tickets or navigate to someone’s front door without tripping over a kid’s Big Wheel on the porch. Sometimes, though, we need light and lots of it. We’re not talking about the lights on our belts or the business end of our weapons — we’re talking scene illumination — to light up a whole canyon to search for a lost kid or a hillside during rescue operations.

Getting lots of light may involve calling the fire department for one of their light trucks or running to the construction rental yard to commandeer high lift lights. But, now satisfying the need for lots-o-light can fit in the trunk of your cruiser or the supervisor’s car.

Streamlight’s Portable Scene Light has all the same power
as the LiteBox, but it gets your light 72″ higher thanks
to the adjustable extension pole. Fold out feet keep
it stable on uneven surfaces.

Streamlight

Streamlight’s E-Flood LiteBox HL blasts out up to 3,600 lumens of pure white light from six C4 LED’s. The E-Flood has three user-selectable output settings starting with high for a flood beam of 3,600 lumens and a run time of 2 hours. The medium setting has a longer run time of 4 hours at 2,400 lumens, and the low setting is 1,200 lumens for 8 hours.

The E-Flood LiteBox HL comes in International safety orange so there’s no way you’d ever lose it. It has a zero-maintenance replaceable 12-Volt, 7.2 Ah sealed lead acid rechargeable battery good for up to 500 recharges. It also has an AC adapter giving you indefinite run time.

A new product from Streamlight, the Portable Scene Light, uses the same LED head as the E-Flood LiteBox, but with a slightly different body. It has nearly identical illumination settings and runtimes, and can be rapidly deployed and easily stowed. So what’s the difference, you ask? The Portable Scene Light gets you elevation — 72″ that is. With its narrow footprint and 72″ extension pole it fits into confined spaces too tight for many other large commercial application lights. Think of it as a way to light up a crash scene if you work for a municipality or county that doesn’t have the budget to support a light truck.

Olight’s Intimidators SR95 (left) and SR96 (right). They aren’t much larger than most patrol duty
lights, but they both pack a powerful punch of light. They also come with sturdy, trunk-proof cases.

Olight

Olight offers lights from a tiny, one-cell CR123-powered unit that puts out a whopping 350 lumens to the rechargeable Intimidator SR95 and SR96 handheld searchlights.

The SR95 is designed to balance reach and illumination. Its LUMINUS SST-90 LED puts out 2,000 lumens to almost half of a mile and can handle any search and rescue. There are three brightness levels, a strobe mode and a lockout function. It also allows for momentary activation or constant on/off. A rechargeable built-in lithium battery powers the light and it has a charging port with power indicator in the tailcap. The SR95 isn’t much larger than the lights we use in the field and it also comes with a carrying case.

It’s big brother, the SR96 Intimidator, is actually smaller in size but packs an even bigger punch. Three Cree MK-R LED’s and separate reflectors blast out an astonishing 4,800 lumens. It’s like holding the sun in your hands. The throw doesn’t reach out to the distance of the SR95 but the area illuminated is amazing. It too has three brightness levels, strobe mode and lockout. A rechargeable lithium battery with a power indicator and charging port on the tailcap powers it. The SR96 has an advanced thermal management system insuring heat dissipates efficiently and it doesn’t overheat.

The E-Flood LiteBox HL from Streamlight is 12.3×5.1×7.7″ and weighs
just 10 pounds. You can run it on either by the rechargeable
battery or with the provided AC adapter.

Needs Arise

Sometimes time is a currency we can’t afford to spend. We can’t wait for fire department assets or run off to the rental yard. Rural areas don’t have the luxury of the almost endless assets many metropolitan areas enjoy. We may just need a whole lot of light right now. If so, these are the right tools for the job.
By Dave Douglas