[WTB] Led Lenser P3 AFS/P (already got it)

Yes, the benefit of a TIR is obvious.
I have 2 fake Led lensers, one without brand and a Pop lite.
The latter wasn’t even that cheap…
But it had the problem of not enough head travel.
So i wasn’t able to get to full flood nor to full focus…
And as you may know, even the real Led Lensers are not ideal (ringy) in between full focus and full flood…
So it was a disappointing light.
The other one, which was only 10 bucks, is much better.

(like many of my lights, they’re both taken apart to be modded… some day…)

There is another thing you can do though.

You can take a fixed reflector light and put a zoomable lens inside it (somehow).

So when you want flood, you bring the lens closer to the LED, which will use the light that would otherwise be reflected by the reflector, and act like a zoomed out zoomie.
For throw, you move the lens forward so it focuses the light that would otherwise be spill.

I’ve seen this on this forum somewhere, can’t remember where though, but likely in Argo’s zoomie thread.

DMM has done a non-zooming light like that.”

No, that’s what I orignially though, but take a look at the tests and reviews of those flashlights, when you focus them you get something that looks like this:

Not a 100% spot like with led lenser.

The flood mode is basically the same though, even brightness with an outer ring.

They’re not really meant to be used in between flood or spot modes, but depends on the model there may be more or fewer rings.
It’s not bad actually, on pretty much all lights you can unfocus it enough to give a larger spot with no visible rings or spill but a lot more area than fully focused.
I think I’ve used about 7 different Led Lensers so far.

This is correct.

LED Lensers use a lighthouse style 2-element fresnel lens. Essentially, it’s a one-piece moulded TIR lens with a small aspheric lens in the center. Unlike a non-zooming TIR, the TIR in an LED Lenser has a large pocket on the underside that is big enough to encompass the entire LED. Larger LED Lensers go a step further by mounting a small star on a post. The opening in the underside of the TIR surrounds the post.

In a conventional aspheric lens flashlight, most of the light hits the bottom side of the lens in flood mode. But in spot mode, 50% or more of the emission cone from the LED is absorbed into the sides of the bezel and wasted. This is why lumens drop dramatically when you cycle a cheap aspheric zoomie.

In a zooming TIR light, the trick is that the inside of the optic fully surrounds the emission cone from the LED in ALL bezel zoom positions. Result is little or no lumen loss when cycling from spot to flood. Note that this doesn’t increase throw compared to an aspheric, but the hotspot may be wider with the same throw.

The 2 elements of this style of TIR optic are the center aspheric lens and the side TIR lens. In LED Lensers, both elements have the same focal length. This gives maximum throw with little spill in spot mode. In most LED Lenser clones the designers have purposely chosen different focal points for each element. The result is a wide even flood beam (just like an LED Lenser), but the spot beam looks more like a conventional reflector light with both spot and spill. The downside of this arrangement is the spot beam has considerably less throw than if both elements had same focal length.

Making these lenses seems a bit of an art form. The lenses in the more recent models of LED Lenser like the MT10 are much, MUCH better than the lenses from 5-year-old model LED Lensers even though the method of operation is the same.

If they have the same focal length and the aspheric is large, why is the spot round rather than round overlaid with square?

Good point. Actually I think they do offset the focal points very slightly. Just enough to blur the spot for a better looking spot beam. But not enough to lose half the output in a spill pattern like on a Coast light.

It’s because the non-lens part of the TIR acts like a reflector.
And as me and easyb discussed (argued) in a post long ago, the image of the LED is rotated depending on which part of the reflector is reflecting it.

(He was right, I was wrong)
That’s the reason reflector flashlights have circular spots.

The total sum of the rotated die projections is a circle.
If you cover the outer part of the TIR, the lens still projects a square die image, as expected.

So the sqare spot is there but there’s so much reflected light that the beam nevertheless appears round, right?

Yeah, all the outer light makes the square almost invisible.
You can still kinda see it, depending on how the focus is.

I see, thanks for the explanation.

There is still one thing that I don’t understand.
How does P3 AFS/P zoom without putting the LED on a pole?

Same principle as the larger lensers. The cup on the optic surrounds the LED and retracts all the way back to the base of the star.

It doesn’t need a pillar, because the lens is so tiny and the focal length is so short. Even without a pillar the emission cone from the LED still hits the entirety of the TIR even in spot mode.

The bigger lensers need a pillar because they have a longer focal length.

Ah, I see, I haven’t thought about utilizing MCPCB as a kind of pillar. :slight_smile:
Thank you. :slight_smile:

The LED itself is thick enough that it allows the TIR to fit around it:

(this is a mod, the original LED is a 5mm LED, but you can see why it would fit inside a TIR easily and be raised up)
Most other led lenser flashlights have a tiny MCPCB and the MCPCB is raised on an alunimum pole, not this flashlight though.

I just got my P3 AFS/P.

The first seller failed to deliver it, the distributor is already out of stock. So if anyone wants to buy this host - this is the last chance.

First impressions?

1. This is not true that the central part is relatively large. It is slightly larger than with my other TIR zoomies, but not as large as with other Led Lensers that I’ve seen.

2. The flood is narrow. Clearly too narrow for comfort but not narrow enough to be a killer blow. And it’s ringy.
3. The throw is square. There is a small round hotspot surrounded by square die projection. I suppose that a small (for a LL) central section makes the square part larger than the round one. I’m not bothered by it being square. But it’s also clearly out of focus.
4. Intermediate beam has a hole in the middle, just like all cheap TIR zoomies that I tried
5. There is clear tint shift in the beam.

Overall the first impression is a severe disappointment.
I did expect some rings as I’ve seen them in reviews. But still this does not look like the lens of P3 AFS/P does not live up to the legendary Led Lenser quality.

I will EDC it now. And I can’t wait to try it outdoor.
The main promise of TIR zoomies is that the spot diameter does not get so much smaller while zooming which is great for walking. I still hope that this will make me like the Led Lenser.

I modded my P3 AFSP by replacing the stock LED with an XPL HI and running it on IMR 10440.

This made the light a lot brighter and greatly improved the tint.

Unfortunately, it also fried the driver. Result is the light no longer works on AAA. Instead it’s full power only on 10440. It still works, but with no modes and no AAA support, runtime is extremely short. Too short for me to consider using it as an EDC over my usual 14500 or 18650 light.

I a driver swap too hard?

The switch is somewhat glitchy. Yesterday it stayed pressed down and didn’t want to go back. After hitting the side of the light with my palm a few times it jumped back….and a second later the light was off.
I got scared a bit…but it turned out that the battery run out just at that moment.
Today I put a new cell and it shines fine. But during one click there was a glitch again. Not strong enough to completely block the switch but strong enough to make me think “not again…”.

It’s still on my neck, so far I fail to find time to take it for a walk outside…

I picked up the Led Lenser MT10 on sale because I was impressed with the focusing system on a friend’s Coast G450 (sadly it uses AA batteries only), and wanted something similar in a smaller form factor and 18650 battery.

My impressions are similar to yours. When testing indoors the flood was narrower than I was hoping for and slightly square with ringing at the edges. The spot was an unfocused square and circle overlayed on top of each other, but relatively bright. I was not impressed with the beamshots on a wall. However, I think it does better in real use outside. The flood is very usable and the spot focus has decent throw. The focusing system is good but not as good the Coast G450 focus. I think a big reason is that the G450 was a much larger flashlight with a much larger optic that produces a more even and larger flood, and its just not possible to achieve the same with the MT10’s smaller optic. I got it at a significant discount, and even so I debated returning it. I was hoping for something much nicer, and I think the retail price is ridiculous. However, the light is unique in my collection and maybe it’ll grow on me with more use. At least its better than any zoomie I’ve tried.