Hey guys, Is it just me that hates those annoying shadow rings when light is fully zoomed in?
I only have 1 zoomie. From Tasco 3 pack sold at Sam’s Club. The only reason I still have it was a gift from GF. I might consider getting rid of it.
Got rid of all zoomies including Atomic Beam, Tactlight, Harbor Freight Quantum QL588, and a few Police Security branded lights.
Any insights or opinions. Feel free to chime in.
I hate zoomies, I have a LEDLENSER it’s the worse POS! It sits in the Junk Box, one day I’ll fire up the the big acetylene torch and slowly melt it down into a molten lump…
Yeah, zoomies are sometimes ringy. Other lights can be ringy as well but zoomies tend to have sharp beam cutoff with rings showing up in otherwise completely dark place - thus being much more visible.
The rings are caused by stray light reflecting off something. You can mostly remove them by blacking out the interior of the flashlight head and lens sides.
Get rid of GF. Then with a clear conscience you will be able to throw away these flashlights.
Aspheric plastic lens will also create stray light. Change to clear glass and blacken the interior of the bezel (maybe also the exposed retracted inner wall). I had some success with high temp BBQ spray paint. Sanded the surface prior and made thin coats at 1 hour intervals.
Not worth it. Can use money for better light.
My edc is a heavily modified SK98 with a dome shaved CRI90+ XHP50A at ≈4A. The remnant dome bezels look square and enlightened. The outer part of the beam shows a sort of thick, uniform ring. Overall I am quite pleased with it, in fact I had not noticed the outer ring until now LoL. This sort of stuff seldom distracts me I presume, or maybe what you speak of is much worse. 
:-)
Fri, 03/29/2019 - 07:39
I’m not a fan of zoomies because of the light-loss when zoomed in, nor The Bat Signal projecting an image of the LED on the target. But when “unzoomed” into full flood mode, they’re quite nice.
I got a Morpilot zoomie with the multi-tool, and it’s surprisingly nice and well-made. Best of all, it “sticks” in flood mode, so you gotta give it a good pull it to unstick it and zoom it in, which suits me just fine.
Other than a bit of yellow around the periphery (a sort of reverse-fried-egg), it’s got a wonderfully smooth and even beam.
Zoomed? Yeah, just looked now, some ringiness but being that I never use it zoomed, what do I care?
Interesting. 
I wonder how did they implement the stickyness…
I went a little goofball crazy and put dc-fix on the inside of one of my many #2 $2 zoomies that I'd emitter swapped with a lovely Xpg-2 4a tint emitter.
The Led is worth more to me than the light so cleaning up the beam on such a nice tint isn't so crazy ..But the beam when zoomed out /or in ?? which ever is which (throw mode) pretty much doesn't exist .It just tightens the beam and of course the output gets crushed ..I think people don't realize how many lumens you lose with an aspheric lens ..with diffuser film on the lens your eye isn't fooled by the higher LUX or intensity of such a tight hot spot.
I'm not sure I like it better ....but it's not worse either .
That’s interesting.
DC-Fix itself doesn’t cause many losses.
With such setup you get a lot of light inside the lens going astray. It surely makes the beam wider, reducing intensity. It may increase bezel losses. Reflection losses might be higher, even some TIR.
But at the same time…manufacturers do it. It shouldn’t be bad. Maybe the amount of diffusion should simple be smaller?
Just a nice snug O-ring, static friction vs dynamic friction.
It's not the diffuser killing lumens it's the aspheric in throw mode
Let me take this straight people. The aspheric does not kill lumens Boaz, there is a very slight loss due to lens efficiency but nothing major. I know you did not wanted to mean :-) otherwise but had to say. The problem is the amount of output which actually hits the lens. This figure already is around 70% in flood mode in most zoomies, with the lens close to the emitter.
I could know better but I believe a special design reflector can be made to redirect all light through the lens in a good way. Some setups already use reflector plus aspheric lens. Don't ask me how the beam ends up but if output efficiency matters it is already achieved. I have a couple lens + reflector setups like this 44mm aspheric one from eBay. They're not yet tested, I'm about to start building the target lamps so stay tuned. Will stick 2x 4000K 219B CRI92 Ra9080 + 2x 4500K 219B CRI92 Ra9080 quads inside each reflector + aspheric on top.
^:)
OK, now I understand what do you mean.
I would be very interested in seeing some beamshots if you were so kind to produce them…
All of my zoom lights throw farther when in zoom mode.
What zoomies are some of you referring to that actually have less intensity and less throw when in zoom mode?
I don’t doubt that some total lumens are lost with most zoomies when in zoom mode, but I’ve never seen one where the intensity and throw distance is decreased when in zoom mode vs flood.
That is right LightObsession.
As I said above what people is bashing here is the amount of output which hits the lens. This could be solved with mirror finished tubes and this would not increase throw perceptibly as far as I understand, but then people would probably complain of strange beam patterns. I could talk some shit here but I'll refrain. 
Aspherics lenses are cool, but it is best to understand the setup limits. They're great uniform flooders and for this purpose dual lenses setups with pre-collimator rock. They can also make great throwers but of course another first stage pre-collimator is required to maximize efficiency, in this case it can be a recycling collar or something else. The recycling collar was developed long ago but was patented by someone recently. The sucka patent system is a piece of sh1t like it was demonstrated more than 100 years ago during aviation's early days. It still encumbers us because people is still not awakened enough (secrecy sh1t). With regards to something else, I mean some sort of special shape reflector designed to have a complementary aspheric atop.
:-)
The rings of light outside the spot or flood most aspheric zoomies feature is usually caused by light bouncing around inside the bezel or off the star.
Ringy zoom lights can often be helped by applying black paint or even black ink from a sharpie around the star, exposed pill and wiring. The black helps to absorb the reflected light and may reduce or eliminate unpleasant rings.