FW3A, a TLF/BLF EDC flashlight - SST-20 available, coupon codes public

You bust me!! :person_facepalming: . I forgot it was 1 April…. :smiley: :smiley:

Good one!! Hilarious. …. :beer: . :beer:

The real twisted part is that little grain of truth that makes a good lie; this is a common way for new products to leak.

I fell for this so hard I had actually started digging through Lumintop’s image hosting site for photos of this mythical FW3A.

No, sorry. It requires soldering to get the driver out before it can be flashed. Take off the bezel, lens, and optic. Unsolder the LED wires. Unscrew the driver retaining ring. Then the driver should come out where it can be flashed. Repeat everything in reverse to re-assemble.

There isn’t really anywhere to put flashing vias, since both surfaces of the driver are really packed with components. It was originally going to have optical programming, but it turns out that would take several hours to transfer a ROM and it would require removing several features to make room.

Yeah, it’s not even the right URL. They’ll probably sell it on Amazon for western customers.

https://www.amazon.com/Lumintop-FW3A-Flashlight-Pocket-Sized/dp/B00137QS28/

The funny thing is, I knew this wasn't the real link. I clicked it anyway, I guess to see where it went. But I suppose you were counting on that.

Edit: quotes ending in links are hard, and harder to fix on mobile.

The more I see of this, the more I like it. Please put me down for a second one. Then I don’t have to decide between emitter options, I’ll just get one of each! If it helps, the number for my first one is 1995.

TK, Good one too but now that song is stuck in my head! :person_facepalming:

The “Convoy S2+ SST20 4000K 95CRI” finally came in today.

  • The UI is Biscotti.
  • The driver has 8 x 7135 chips.
  • The modes are 0.1, 1, 10, 35, & 100%.

Here are ’my’ impressions of the SST20 4000K in ’this’ light.

  • The lower power levels (0.1% & 1%) have a medium pea green tint. :confounded: . :person_facepalming:
  • The 10% level has a mild pea green tint. :confounded: . :person_facepalming:
  • The 35% level is a creamy white. :+1:
  • The 100% level is a creamy white with a slight rose tint. :+1:

Surprisingly, I really like the 35% & 100% levels. :+1: :+1:

However, the green tint at the 0.1, 1, & 10% levels kill it for me. It is just downright ugly.

If there was a way to avoid the greenish tint at the lower levels, this would be nice enough.

These are ’my impressions of this particular SST20 4000K 95+ CRI’, yours may vary.

I wonder how a slight -green filter would affect the higher modes.

Thanks, teacher. The green isn’t great, but as we were saying before, at that low price, it wasn’t too much of a risk. Maybe you will like the throw and tint just using higher levels.

Your welcome cabfrank. Yeah, no doubt at this price it was a true deal. :+1: A win/win.
And that is exactly what I am going to do, just use the two higher levels. It actually suits me quite well when the ‘green is gone’. :wink:

Even 10% is not horribly bad. But below 10% truly sux…. ’to me’.

Put me up for one 4000K option please, doen’t matter which led will be used.

That’s why I don’t like the SST-20 (and LH351D) emitters I’ve tried. I mostly only use low levels, and they don’t look good at those levels. Even when doing CCT mixing to pull the tint pinkward, it still looks greenish in the bottom half of the ramp. The FET portion of the ramp looks nice though.

OTOH, it’s a little weird that you’d see much tint shift on a 8x7135 driver. It should have fairly constant tint across all modes except moon, since they’re all running at the same power with different duty cycles. But I suppose if the pulses have rounded edges instead of being true square waves, you’d still see some tint changes.

That’s also a property of how our eyes work.

When there is less light, our eyes tend to prioritize green wavelengths.

That’s what I’ve noticed, and is a strange phenomenon.

Interesting that I don’t see green in my Sofirn C01s on low or high. Green usually irks me like crazy- maybe the optic in this light helps?

I thought that this occurs at all wavelengths? What I’ve read on the subject is that green is the brightest perceivable color to the human eye under all conditions?

Shaved LH351Ds are quickly becoming my favorite emitter, for single emitter lights at least.

It’s drops the duv to nearly right on the BBL or below - depending on which bin you start with - lowers the CCT just a tad and makes them a bit throwier without any noticeable change in output to my eyes.

I’ve heard the same is true of the SST-20 but that they’re also harder to shave/sand and I haven’t tried either of these emitters in a TIR triple/quad where I think I’d still prefer the SST-20 for a throwier beam.

For a single emitter light the 351D has a great balanced beam profile though. Hitting roughly 700 lumens in a Sofirn SF14 w/4000K bin from Mtn-Elec and the “DOGFART” 5000K has finally made me like my Neutron V3 after swapping out the terribly green and tint-shifting X-PL HD.

Three reasons:

*I suspect that people on BLF overcompensate: if a tint has not the desired rosiness, they have learned to perceive it as greenish
*If compared next to a pink flashlight, it indeed looks green.
*light above the BBL looks uglier in low CRI than in high CRI

One more reason with flashlights in moonlight mode : Purkinje effect
Even if an ideal flashlight has zero tint shift over its different modes, you are going to perceive a tint shift with a particularly low moonlight mode.

Yes, the TIR in the CO1s will likely mix the beam differently than the reflector in the S2+.

Many LED’s, especially in reflectors, have a significant tint difference between the hotspot and the spill, and my experience is this difference gives you a more obvious means of comparison to notice bad tint in part of the beam.

I’d bet if the beam in the S2+ was diffused, the green would be less noticeable even on moonlight.