Driving led s at high power?

absolute maximum means what more or less what it says, if you put more current through the manufacturer won't be held responsible for failure. Unless data sheet says otherwise it'll be a continuous current figure. The led would *probably* survive a bit more current, but then again it might not.

Occasionally manufactures will detail pulsed operation. I expect it'll be able to take higher pulsed current, because heating plays a large part in limiting the current of semiconductors. But again it might not like more than 7A!

as to what the LED would look like with a single 1ms 7A pulse. ...

perception in central vision doesn't really notice changes of less than about 1/50 of second ie . 20ms

If looking at it directly you probably wouldn't even notice it had turned on then back off, but if it's *really* bright you might well have give yourself a eye strain (bit like looking at the sun)

Peripheral vision picks up change faster and so might notice something jsut happened with the LED if "looking out of the corner of an eye". Natural reaction would be turn and attempt to look in more detail (probably why the change in perceptual speeds) and if someone didn't know what had just happened they could end up quite confused!