I hadn’t seen any information at all about these, so I just took the plunge and bought a Solarforce lantern converter for about $21 incl. shipping. Seeing as how it was Solarforce I wasn’t worried - it’s pretty good.
The base: Emblazoned with the Solarforce logo the base is made out of plastic although it has some loose plastic issues they’re not seen from the outside. They’re thick and hard so it’ll survive for a long time. It has three wide legs and uses a screw as a fastening system. It is very sturdy and doesn’t bend at all.
The head: Called the LT-1 the head has a plastic cylindrical lens surrounding the light orange peel diffuser. It unscrews into two parts. It has a tripod hole at the bottom and comes with an o-ring for water resistance. The head is made so it replaces just the bezel, you can leave the lens in place. At the top it has a nipple with a hole in it which is for a lanyard or keychain. At the top it also has threads which I have no idea what they’re used for are used to screw your bezel on so you don’t lose it. It diffuses really well, from horizontal, about 270° at the bottom and closer to 300° on the top. It is made out of the same matte anodized aluminum as the Solarforce L2M.
Unfortunately my current drop-in is stuck on moonlight mode (I-O I’m looking at you.), so I had to take some longer exposure shots to get the beam pattern. Actually, there is no beam pattern. It diffuses really well. Don’t worry though, in a few days my new NW drop in will be here so I’ll be able to take proper shots then (24/06/13[DD/MM/YY]) and measure % light lost.
This is an L2M by the way.
The o-ring doing it’s work.
Note: The stand was 4cm away from the box, and it already lit the whole thing up. And yes, when my drop-in arrives I will do it against a wall to show you the dispersion of light.
UPDATE: I got my XML2 NW drop in (Thank you IO for swapping my original 1st gen for a 2nd gen, I forgive the long waiting time ) and I chucked it in the L2M. I took some ceiling bounce numbers with the bezel on, and with the lantern on. I placed the light meter on the desk and on the table to see if there was any difference, there wasn’t. The results surprised me.
Bezel:
floor: 15.3 lux
table: 49 lux
Lantern:
floor: 4.9 lux
table: 23 lux
Also throw numbers at 1 meter are (Note my reflector is OP):
Bezel: 19,700 lux
Lantern: 110 (yes, one hundred and ten lux.)
What I found surprising was that the light meter got lower readings for the lantern. I have a few theories.
- The lantern does absorb some of the light (probably 30% by eye).
- When testing normal lights by ceiling bounce, the light is pointed at the ceiling. The lantern doesn’t project light onto the ceiling, but rather to the sides which affected the reading. I didn’t do it in a completely uniform room, so it definitely did affect readings.
Beam patterns:
Conclusion: Since I don’t have a light box I can’t accurately measure the light loss. Sorry guys. However it does produce light which you are able to look at without blinding yourself. It works relatively well albeit quite expensive for what it is.
When compared with a tail standing light, the surrounding environment is much dimmer (when indoors), and this leads me to believe it will only be useful when there is no ceiling to ceiling bounce such as in outdoor environments, or places with really high ceilings. So for indoor stick to ceiling bounce, but for outdoors this is great for putting on the floor to light everything on the floor up without it being in your eyes since it doesn’t actually light up the stuff above it.