What I wanted to say was a smaller emitter VS a larger emitter with an OP reflector (let's say the emitter/reflector size ratio would be the same)
With a small emitter, even the slightest imperfections in the reflector would smooth out/spread the Hot-Spot edge sharpness
If you found the FW1A being a bit throwy, that could be because the Hot-Spot (with the OP reflector) instead of being homogeneous, thus, center to edge the same brightness (egg-yolk tint shifting aside) it's faded way more from the center to the edge, (compared with an SMO reflector) thus producing a more pronounced throw in the very center, apparently making the Hot-Spot smaller and throwier I'd imagine because all of the edge would fade-out much faster with distance than the center of it.
EDIT:
If I'm excused of my quick'n dirty Paint skills.. this is pretty much what I think happens with a small emitter like an XP-L HI and an OP/SMO reflector:
Of course this is a rather gross approximation and exaggeration from my part, just to make the difference more striking..
And this would be how two of my 14500 lights with the same (exactly the same) geometry reflector, one OP, one SMO and same emitter size, thus same emitter/reflector ratio are looking like:
Of course, disregard the brightness that was manually matched, the tint and likely the tint-shift on the left - What I only wanted to portray here is just the beams patterns..
OP on the Left / SMO on the Right (my preference being.. Right)
We don’t really have to guess. Some of our more talented reviewers made equipment for measuring intensity vs beam angle. For example, in maukka’s FW3A review, there are detailed measurements of how the beam is shaped with three common optics:
The 10507 is more or less equivalent to a SMO reflector… and the 10511 is essentially the same thing but frosted (similar to OP) so it blends the beam together a bit. I greatly prefer the smoother 10511 beam.
OP reflector or frosted optics = smooth beam, gradual slopes, subtle or no artifacts
The effect of an OP reflector or frosted optic is very similar to running a Gaussian blur filter over the beam, and that’s a good thing… unless you want sharp edges.
In any case, that’s not what causes the “fried egg” effect. The XP-L HI beam is still more intense at the center, even when it looks like a fried egg… it just has a visible tint shift there due to the way it emits different frequencies at different angles. It’s not nearly as bad about this “Cree rainbow” effect as most LEDs, but it still happens somewhat. The warmest frequencies go out the sides of the LED, where they bounce off the reflector and end up in the center of the hotspot.
The effect is usually most visible with a large smooth reflector, but it can also be seen even in the non-frosted Carclo optics. Here are those same results, but showing CCT by angle instead of intensity. This is the egg yolk effect:
Regardless, I almost always prefer a smooth change of intensity from the hotspot to the outer edge of the spill. It doesn’t have to be a linear change, but I like to avoid the appearance of any sharp edges. The plateau-shaped beam in the “quick-n dirty Paint” pic above doesn’t really appeal to me.
I liked the FW1A’s beam with XP-L HI… it was very nice. But it was too throwy for my purposes, so I modified it. The effect was very similar to what is shown in the intensity-vs-angle graph above, going from 10507 to 10508. It went from ~22 cd/lm down to about ~10 cd/lm, which made the hotspot wider and less intense. And I’m pretty happy with the result. I wanted ~10 or ~12 cd/lm, and that’s what I got.
From what I've experienced so far, the ringy beam usually, if not exclusively comes from the emitter's centering ring, height not properly adjusted, lens reflecting the emitter back into the reflector ofc at different angles, the bezel holding the glass lens in place if it's glossy instead of matte and other small, overlooked factors like these. The artifacts that I've seen related to the reflector and here it applies both to SMO and OP, where the OP is hiding them to some extent, because.. that's what the OP reflector is intended to do, are the flower petal corona, or depending on the depth and centering alignment different other shape variations, uneven Hot-Spot brightness, accentuated tint-shift (with some OP reflectors I've found the tint-shift to be not only noticeable, but considerably more pronounced than with the very slightly different shaped but compatible SMO counterpart reflector and some other times with a SMO reflector the tint shift would be basically more pronounced and separated completely from the Hot-Spot, all in the Corona)
All in all, I would say that the reflector geometry, emitter alignment, emitter / reflector size ratio (in fact reflector angle vs emitter size would be the more relevant ratio here.. ) are playing the most relevant part in the beam quality and even to some extent in the tint shifting.
All of the 3 TIR's in the intensity/angle graph that you've presented are nothing like what I like my beam patterns to look like, I can see very little to no plateau in the center 5 ~ 10 degrees and the slope is too gradual all around, also the spill is negligible.
EDIT: In fact, to cut the long story short, I've got a pretty good representation of a beam pattern/shape comparison in the picture on the "white" wall in my previous post. I very much like the one Hot-Spot on the right (SMO) which is.. spot on, VS the one on the left (OP) which I don't like one bit. And to understand what sharp, defined and homogeneous means to me, that's pretty much it, the beam on the right side nearly perfect. Maybe it lacks a bit of detail because of the limited color range of the camera. But, as you could probably notice, there's no artifacting going on, no ringing and no crazy sharp edges to speak of. And the setup it's a plain emitter in a SMO reflector, no difuser, no blurring or anything alike, because there was absolutely no need for them. Big Hot-Spot was obtained simply by the small and wider angle reflector (I'd say it's about a 20 degrees angle reflector in this particular case)
The one on the left is a Lumintop EDC05 standard OP reflector, XP-L HD and the one on the right is the Sofirn SP10S on which I've swapped the original OP reflector to the SMO one from the older SP10A revision and it runs a LH351D (reason for the lesser tint shifting)
Both reflectors are the same geometry and they would be interchangeable if it weren't for the deeper cut on the outside on the EDC05 (deeper border on the Sofirn's reflector and deeper cut on the head)
Of course. The primary characteristics of the emitter and optics play the largest role. But I thought the point being made was that, all other things being equal, with SMO vs OP as the only difference, you are disappointed that the FW1A uses OP instead of SMO.
That preference is totally fine; each person looks for different things in a light. The FW1A reflector is a good design though. It works well, aside from one visible ring outside of the spill area. There is also a mild Mach band effect at the outer edge of the spill. But the hotspot is nice and smooth with a fairly decent blended corona around it. And the spill is bright enough to provide some useful wider context without wasting a lot of light. Lumintop did a pretty good job with the FW1A optics.
Those are usually caused by two things:
Large square emitters in well-focused small round reflectors (corona petals)
Overlapping reflectors like on the SP36 (spill area petals)
If the LED is smaller, or the reflector is bigger, there is less flower petal pattern. Or if the reflector is defocused or blurred slightly, there is less flower petal pattern.
Lots of things can cause rings in the beam. You listed several of those things. There are a lot of ways optics can go wrong.
However, the sharp edges from precise optics can also be considered rings. Extremely well-focused reflectors tend to have mach bands between different parts of the beam, and that effect can be undesirable.
Apologies for going on a tangent. I find this stuff kind of fascinating. Here’s a visual summary of what a Mach band is:
In the graph you created for an egg yolk beam, it looks like the brightness is highest at the edges of the hotspot and slightly lower in the middle… like turning a soda can upside-down so the the concave bottom is on top. That mild donut hole effect is commonly perceived with well-focused smooth reflectors.
But in general it’s not actually dimmer in the middle. It’s an optical illusion caused by the mach band effect. In order to look flat like a plateau, the hotspot needs to be brighter in the middle and have somewhat more rounded edges. A truly flat center looks like it’s less bright in the middle.
As an example, here is a rendering of a beam with a perfectly flat hotspot and a perfectly flat spill area, with linear transitions between:
It appears to have a mild donut hole effect, but it is only an illusion.
Of course, virtually no lights actually achieve this degree of flatness. But the effect is still present and somewhat visible even with the edges rounded off a bit. For a beam whose hotspot appears flat, it’ll be shaped more like a round hill or a slice from the top of a sphere.
Those mach bands are quite an interesting effect and pretty much what I've noticed on a few of my lights, that apparently had a slight/slim brighter ring just at the edge of the Hot-Spot. Now, makes sense why..
Hasn't bothered me too much, but I could've done without them (visually perceived), thus a bit of blending between the individual areas, on a much smaller scale compared to their own areas would be welcome.
Not so much so to the extent that an OP reflector would blend them combined with such a small emitter like an XP-L HI - the size of the blended area would give too much of a faded Hot-Spot and no definition.
That mock-up beam pattern drawing, looks pretty close to what I'm always after in a beam pattern - only slightly less bright corona and brighter spill, maybe I'd take even more fade from the corona to the spill.
Basically, I'm still ending up giving as example the right side of my first comparison picture of the two Hot-Spots - that beam pattern really has the near perfect balance of definition, smoothness, Hot-Spot size, etc.
That is as far as my preference goes and the purpose of that light's intended use - that being low powered close to mid distance small EDC.
For this small emitter, the SMO reflector's imperfections are smoothing the beam just enough to be.. "soft" to the eyes, but still carrying enough definition to the beam's elements and keep the Hot-Spot.. "flat".
Just enough to trick out that mach banding effect, but not enough to blend the beam's elements in a complete smooth, undefined blur. I just don't.. "feel" when I'm pointing the light when it's so blurry and faded..
Here's an example of an OP beam and a small emitter that I cannot stand:
Likely close to what a FW1a is looking like currently (maybe a tad bigger Hot-Spot tho.. )
And here would be an example of a beams that I would very much like:
I've probably exaggerated with the size of the Hot-Spot for this comparison, but regardless, this would be a nice SMO beam pattern and would make a good contrast to represent what I like in a beam VS what I dislike..
Cheers!
EDIT:
Just found this YT comparison of 2 lights (Olight S2R Baton II & Baton Pro) where someone with a proper camera took some decent captures of the beam patterns of these two lights and one extra (Klarus E1)
Ok, the 2 Olights are TIR optics, but basically, as far as the Hot-Spot goes, there shouldn't be any relevant difference between reflector and TIR. One of them would be the equivalent of a SMO, the other an OP.
The SMO counterpart is just a plain smooth TIR, while the OP counterpart is a frosted TIR, both of them on top of a big die XM-L2. The E1 it's a weird diamond pattern textured TIR on top of a small die XP-L HI
So.. first, worst of them all, the Klarus E1 - small die emitter (XP-L HI) and textured (diamond texture) optic - small Hot-Spot with loads of blending in comparison to it's area/size/diameter:
Next, comes the second worst, the Baton Pro - large die emitter (XP-L2) and frosted optics - reasonably large Hot-Spot, but still too much fading/blending of the Hot-Spot in relation to it's size/surface:
And finally, best of them all by far, the S2R Baton II - the SMO counterpart - large die emitter (XP-L2) and SMO TIR - large, defined, homogeneous Hot-Spot with just the right amount of smoothing on the edges:
yes, but that only pointed out the difference between a triple and a single
it does a good job, but not they type of beamshot I was hoping for
this is the type of beamshot I wanted to see, I consider this an excellent beam btw, for single LED reflector application
ToyKeeper, thank you, I chopped your last pic to show 80T, so we can discuss the actual specific beam of the FW1a in a visual:
so, is that FW1a beam too fuzzy for you @80T?
it looks pretty good to me, I like the smooth gradient (but I have no direct personal experience, and pics only tell so much)
I don't have a good setup for taking pictures of a flashlight beam and likely not many of us around here do, thus, as someone previously mentioned, it's easy to get mislead by a a beam shot picture.
For ex. here's my S2+ XP-G2 / SMO reflector - tried my best to get a decent shot, but really don't know how to get a proper brightness balance..
It's looking overexposed, but overall, it does catch the basic pattern of the beam (well, the Hot-Spot and the Corona in this crop as I don't have a big enough white wall available)
Note how dim the Corona is in comparison to the defined Hot-Spot, even with this exposure.. they're both dimmer irl, but the ratio between them seems about right as when they are dimmer.
As for the beam shot that you've posted above - It's still looking overexposed, so I can't really tell. The Hot-Spot alone, as is, is looking quite decent, the Corona is looking too bright, and with too much blending in the Hot-Spot, but that might just be the exposure.. So, all in all, for a semi thrower, the Hot-Spot looks about right and maybe in person, the rest of the beam might be looking just fine, or it could be looking worse and the camera is.. "compensating"..
The pic from TK's FW1A looks a bit harder to interpret, but I'd say it's the same case of overexposure and the Hot-Spot is even more faded than the camera is showing, pretty much in line with what my previous mock-up was looking, the one that I've said it might be looking close to what the FW1A does.
Anyways, my preference still is in simple terms, a big "flat" Hot-Spot with dim corona, and low blending between elements, just enough to look smooth and not eye-popping.. I don't know how to put it any other way.
Looking at the popularity of smaller lights to use TIRs and textured reflectors I think you might be in the minority for wanting a very defined beam in a light this size.
I would say its probably much easier to make a beam smooth and artifact free than it is to have very sharp cutoffs between beam elements without having ugly artifacts (like even some throwers still do, with the trade-off being 100% worth it there IMO).
I don't know about size and the type of reflector, but my SP10S is a 14500 (granted, the reflector was replaced from the earlier revision, the SP10A, but that's basically the same light, just different driver)
The other light is a Convoy S2+ which I've swapped in an XP-G2 and this is pretty much the same size reflector as the FW1A, I think even smaller.
So definitely a small light with no bells and whistles can have a very nice beam, just with a small enough emitter to accommodate the reflector's angle. Thing is, everybody is aiming for the highest lumen count and the highest candela rating. This causes some issues - the emitter choice gets bigger in size, and the reflector angle gets low, thus the emitter's die area heavily overflows the reflector's intended angle of reflection going way into what should be the corona and spill areas, basically throwing out the window the intended beam pattern and beam elements ratios - So how to fix it ? Simply.. adding blur into the mix - add an OP reflector and that's it.
My S2+ with its original emitter (XP-L2) was indeed brighter, but with the SMO reflector the beam was bland and undefined - swapping it to the XP-G2 made the beam pattern nearly perfect and defined with all the 3 beam elements in their own place and with their proper ratio, not overlapping and not blending more than they should've, just enough not to be an eye-popping sharp artifacting mess. And the slightest imperfections in the SMO reflector are enough to do just that.
