That’s for sure , I wanted to post some beam shots and quickly realized an IPad camera is not representative of what the eye sees. Not even close.
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.
@80T, if you really want maximum throw, then get yourself an SMO reflector light with a dedomed SST-20.
You’ll see how intense the beam can be.
I never implied that I wanted throw, "big flat defined Hot-Spot and a dim Corona" have nothing to do with throw, just with the.. beam's shape/look.
For throwing I have a couple decent throwers, from de-domed XP-E2's to XHP-35's - all of them having decent defined but not sharp beam patterns - actually on the contrary, they have smooth enough beam patterns.
Maybe the GT-Mini (XP-L HI) and the Manker U23 (XHP-35) have the egg-yolk effect in the Hot-Spot, but that is due to the tint-shifting, not because of the beam pattern.
So, in a small EDC flashlight like this, I'm not looking for either throw or power, especially with the small thermal mass.. What I'm looking for is a nice beam pattern with a nice big flat useful Hot-Spot for short distances.
This way, it would be just perfect for EDC: Low power - low temps, long run-times, low to no step-down, good close range useful quality beam, very nice UI and good size for EDC and holding it in hand.
Cheers!
Sorry for the double post, but just to keep things separated..
So.. First things first, obviously I do like this light as it's potentially covering lots of my requirements for a compact enough EDC, thus, I might bite the bullet sooner or later.. so that's out of the way.
Next, I would want to know some info about the reflector and the driver and maybe make a few small suggestions, just to know how moddable this host would be to better fit my own preferences.
What is the reflector size for the FW1A - Diameter, Depth and less important emitter opening Diameter ? Is there any compatible size common reflector that could be used as a drop-in replacement (S2/S2+ for ex.) ?
How is the power stage driven ? I know there's a 1 + 7 + FET setup, but I'm not really sure how that works.. I'll take it that the 7135's are driven in high freq. PWM and the FET in voltage ?
And how and why is there a 1 + 7 setup for the 7153's ? What would be the difference to.. say, 8 + FET or 1 + FET ? Also, how is the MCU driving them ? each channel gets a PIN from the MCU to drive it ?
Like in 2 PWM pins from the MCU are driving the 1 * 7135 and the 8 * 7135's and a 3rd pin is driving the FET ? In this case, could the driver be modded to accommodate a less powerful emitter like an XP-G2 ?
So, with only 4 * 7135's and no FET, the MCU would only drive the 4 * 7135's and that would leave 2 available pins for controlling a bi-color LED (Red/Green) as a battery status indicator while the light is "On" ?
What I'm thinking is having the reflector replaced, remove the FET and few 7135's, leaving only 3 to 5 of them depending on the emitter, swap the emitter to an XP-G2 or an LH351D or a Nichia 119D/219D, or something nice, then drill a small, plain round hole on the side about driver level to accommodate a small SMD bi-color LED that will be used as a battery indicator and use the 2 MCU pins that are remaining from the FET and one of the 7135 channels to drive that small battery indicator LED. All of the above if possible ofc.. :)
Another thing I've noticed, was a tactical ring accessory for the FWXX lights and it's looking nice, only I would take a Nitecore style one over it because it would make for a better anti-roll design.
Ex. of a Nitecore Tactical Ring:
Very nice anti-roll design, in comparison to the current offe.. ring:
Which is nice and slim and good looking, but not really looking like it's serving too much practical purpose. I get that the pocket clip would be the actual anti-rolling element, but I can still see a bit more.. "tabbed" ring would do even better.
Besides this tactical ring, I would also add another two optional rubber elements/accessories (color options maybe ?) to the head and tail of the light, just to add to the anti-roll design for one, add some bezel cutouts and also protect the light from drops and scratches, something along the lines of this light, but ofc. slimmer and removable:
Yay!..
Yeah, that’s kind of the opposite of what I usually want. I typically want the beam to be a smooth slope from the center of the hotspot all the way to the outer edge of the beam, 180 degrees wide. Brightest at the center, of course, and different curve shapes between the center and the edge to allow for both throwy and floody lights… but ideally no flat sections at all.
If I point a light forward to illuminate my path, I ideally want it to light up the whole path to approximately the same lux. That means the beam is brightest at the center and then fades smoothly out to the very edge. At least, that’s how the beam looks when pointed at a wall. But when pointed forward into the distance along flat ground, the result is to illuminate everything to the same level.
A beam with a big flat hotspot is better for pointing at a wall, to illuminate the entire wall to a single brightness. Or really, any time the light is pointed at things which are all the same distance away from the light, a flat beam makes sense. I keep a couple lights like that around… I just don’t use them much because I don’t often encounter situations where it is needed.
Going off topic a tiny bit but anyone know who is carrying the grip ring? I don’t see it at Illumn, Neal’s store or on Fin17’s page.
If I remember correctly it only came on the FW3T, FW3C and the purple TK version. I’ve got one from my FW3T I’m not using if you’re looking for one.
Weird. I purchased a purple one as a gift and don’t recall seeing it.
If you’re sure you don’t mind parting with it I’d be happy to take it. Let me know how much. I’ll pay for the shipping even if you don’t want anything for the ring itself.
Likely you're more of an outdoors person than I am, thus the different preference in beam patterns. Indeed, for outdoors and pointing at your pathway in the distance, that would make sense, while mostly pointing at around your garden at the furthest, or around the house when you're out for a cup of water, or some dark place inside some equipment at work, a flat close distance beam would make more sense.
Regardless, I'm usually taking the rule of the coin size spot at an arm's length distance to be my tightest Hot-Spot diameter (flat, ofc.. ) on a throwyer light and even bigger for more close up, general purpose lights.
From there on, I do like the Corona to be dim enough and the spill mostly linear up to where it lasts, ending in a smooth transition if possible and I still think that dim Corona is enough to compensate for the angle of the beam pointed at some distance on the flat, especially when I'm not talking about a throwy light.
Anyways, I find even on a walk outside, a beam like you're describing would still not be ideal, maybe it's looking nice in the distance on the flat surface of the road, but usually, you would point either couple of meters in front of you, where this effect wouldn't be relevant/noticeable enough to be accounted for, at distant vertical standing objects, where a flat Hot-Spot would illuminate a flat/perpendicular "plane"/object in the distance, regardless of which distance as long as the CD rating is helping your light's reach, or at times right at your feet, moment where the middle of the Hot-Spot would likely obscure by contrast any peripheral vision for the brief moment when you'd need it. I still think a flat Hot-Spot is more useful in most situations than a gradual slope/fade from the very center. I think a "zoomie" like homogeneous Hot-Spot is overall the more.. serviceable option between the two. Idk, but if I come to think of it, most of the visual cues, most of what you're looking at, in contrast, slanted VS perpendicular, I'd take it that it's more towards the perpendicular to your vision category than slanted. Being it a car on the road, a dog, a boat on a lake, a cabinet door in the dark, a building, a bench, a sign.. something lying at your feet, whatever have you.. all of those visual cues that you're looking at, are more or less perpendicular to your vision. Also you can only focus on one plane/depth/distance at a time, jumping from detail to detail, moment when you can also point the light at the said detail, which.. anyways you would do by reflex regardless. So, I don't see much point in having a nicely even illuminated flat surface from close to distant in one instance, unless you'd like to take a good photograph or something relevant in that context. For me, a flat Hot-Spot covering at least the area that your eye can focus on at one time would make more sense in most situations.
That's a picture taken from the AE Lumintop Store page - the FW1A description page
Thanks. Ironically it isn’t available in their store either (at least not yet).
It is not included with the purple version.
I got one with a FW3C though, and tried it, and can’t recommend it. When it’s placed just under where the clip goes, it makes the tail wider for more grip… until it doesn’t. It was soft enough that it just kind of flopped over under pressure and rolled up onto the tailcap.
It should be okay for light or medium amounts of pressure, as a way to increase traction while wearing gloves. But for a really solid grip, I’d suggest just using the shape already built into the tail, since it’s metal and doesn’t roll if squeezed hard.
I’m saying your idea of a “nice” beam is - from what I can see- not what most people are looking for, and harder to accomplish, and that’s why it’s rarer.
“intended angle of reflection” is pretty relative I think, it’s just a physical function of that size relation and bigger emitters take a bigger reflector to get that light into the hotspot (whether that’s seen as a good or bad thing). A bigger emitter relative to the reflector will have a floodier beam, that isn’t always undesirable. I don’t see how an OP reflector would be a solution to higher intensity in the spill and corona.
“(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” But you just said “The smaller the emitter, the fuzzier the Hot-Spot.” :question:
I could be biased because for me any beam with sharp cutoffs washes out everything around the hotspot more to my eyes. I’d prefer a gradual shift with everything except a dedicated thrower.
Yes, by "nice beam" I was talking about preference, what looks good to me. As for harder to accomplish, I don't think it is any harder reason I've gave the examples of 2 basic lights with such a beam, the SP10A/B/S (same light different driver) and the S2+. Nothing fancy about those two lights. Well, thing is, the S2+ does have ringing outside the beam from the glass lens, while the SP10 doesn't. So, in regards to that aspect, the artifacts in the beam, that might be a challenge. Still, ringing outside the spill it's an equal issue with both SMO and OP reflectors alike and not a reflector issue actually.
Reflectors come in various angles, 5, 10, 15, 20, etc. and anything in between as far as I'm aware, basically not being the perfect parabola that would be used for the ideal dot emitter, just to accommodate the non-dot real life counterparts, the bigger the emitter the higher the deviation from the perfect parabola. Basically, with the ideal dot emitter and one such reflector, you won't get a full surface reflection of the emitter at the focal point. You are with a real emitter though, as that has a surface area to "compensate back". But for a lower degree reflector, a smaller surface area emitter would be covering that angle shift, giving the intended beam pattern, while a big area emitter would exceed and overlap that intended reflection angle deviation in the reflector. I might be wrong, but info on this matter is either scarce, or I didn't know where to look and from what I could gather and what my observations were, this is what I concluded for the time being.
A bigger emitter with a relatively small reflector, will indeed give you a floddier beam, but at the cost of the Hot-Spot shape, where the Hot-Spot would be fading to the edges from where the reflected emitter's surface would overlap the reflector's intended angle of reflection to the emitter's reflected edges. That will create a messy beam where the Hot-Spot and the Corona would be a blended mess instead of two visibly distinct beam elements. With a big enough emitter, the Hot-Spot alone might fade all the way up into the edge of the spill.
Never said an OP reflector would be a solution to anything, I was just trying to say that for such an.. unfortunate mix of reflector and emitter that is usually desired, most manufacturers find the easiest solution to just blur out the messy beam by using an OP reflector. It was just a bit of a "rethorical affirmation" of what happens in the real world.
Yes, I did said that the smaller the emitter, the fuzzier the Hot-Spot - with an OP reflector. With a bigger emitter, the fuzziness, the blending/blurring radius is the same as it is with the smaller one, but in comparison with the.. wider beam elements this blend radius is smaller. Imagine blurring a spot 10 pixels wide with a 5 pixels radius blur - compare that to blurring a 50 pixels wide spot with the same 5 pixels radius blur. What are the results ? The 10px radius spot got completely blurred, whilst the 50px spot is still looking nice and dandy but just with a 5px thick edge blurred, still looking like a spot - not so much for the 10px spot which is now just a fuzzy little blur itself.
Cheers!
I’m thankful that they do this for lights which aren’t designed as dedicated throwers. A little bit of texture on the reflector can go a long way toward making a beam look nicer. Many manufacturers aren’t willing to put in the amount of development and QC resources required to make a smooth-reflector beam look good, and I’d much rather have an okay-looking OP beam instead of seeing all the SMO-beam’s flaws during use.
Even when companies put in the effort to do a SMO beam well though, I still kinda prefer a blended version most of the time. That is, all other things being equal.
Here are a couple pictures comparing the two reflector types, with all other things being equal:
From one of selfbuilt’s reviews:
From PowerLEDLighting:
I think OP was the right choice for the FW1A. It has more than enough throw, so I’m glad they decided to make the beam look nicer instead of squeezing out the last possible bit of extra throw.
I can see from the two comparison examples that the SMO reflector choices or reflector & emitter pairings were unmatched at best and looking anything but correct. In these two cases, the OP counterparts, if at all of the same geometry, are much more desirable by comparison. Not sure if the pictures are biased in any way or the other, but I cannot see much difference in actual smoothness in these beams as well, SMO VS OP.
Another thing you've mentioned and seems to be going around with other users, it's the assumption that SMO reflector/s equals throw and while by comparison with the OP counterpart, all other factors being equal, the OP will always have a slight advantage in that regard, that advantage is just marginal and not a definite trade of any SMO reflector. Given an op reflector of a 5 degrees angle and a 20 degrees angle SMO reflector, both running on top of the same emitter, the OP reflector will out throw the SMO one by a relevant amount, difference being that the OP wouldn't be the most efficient at throw and Candela rating compared to it have been a SMO of the same exact geometry / angle. On the other hand, the SMO reflector simply wouldn't be as smooth as it would've should it have been an OP of the same angle / geometry. It would still be a much more floodier beam than with the narrow angle OP. Also, likely with a better beam quality as far as my preference goes.
I really do not think that a quality beam could not be achieved with an SMO reflector as easily as it would be with an OP one. The main two factors to take in consideration would be the reflector's geometry and a purposefully size matched emitter. I don't think a flashaholic light designed by a knowledgeable group of people and manufactured by a well established company as Lumintop wouldn't be able to manage the same level of design and quality of two simple, budget friendly lights as at least the two ones that I've already gave as real life practical examples, namely, the Sofirn SP10 variations and the Convoy S2+ with no extra smoothing applied or any other design wise interventions. I'm talking about no need for smoothing with an OP reflector, or crazy sharpness or other "regular" SMO artifacts.
EDIT:
Come to think about it, I'm basically mistaken arguing beam quality of an SMO reflector, being it compared to an OP, or to a subjective quality standard.. What I'm actually arguing about is simply the geometry and proportions of a beam shape, artifacting or not alike. The OP reflector is just there to hide these artifacts mostly, if any, which is a "cheap" way of hiding defects/imperfections, which I'm not that adamant about and also smoothing out the beam overall, which I'm not a fan of. I simply prefer a clean distinction of the beam elements with that big, flat Hot-Spot and just the right amount of blending, which with a SMO reflector of a wide enough angle and a smaller emitter, just from the reflector's imperfections alone would be achieved, artifacting or not. The OP reflector simply doesn't make sense for me not because it would or wouldn't hide these artifacts, but because with a small emitter like this small light has to use, by ratio, it would smooth out too much of the beam's elements, for example it would make the Hot-Spot not only faded on the edges into the Corona, but actually completely change it from a flat plateau to a smooth fade all the way from center out to what once was an edge - not a sharp eye poking edge, but a distinct transition.
I have sometimes issue with my FW1A, when I insert the battery and screw the head, flashlight turns on and stays on, there is nothing I can do, only unscrewing the head and screwing again helps. Is that a bug or I’m doing something wrong?