Hi a newbie here, just wondering what are my options for a led flashlight that is powerful, steplessly dimmable and can be focused. Am looking to use this as lighting for photography. I have the Lowel GL-1 which is specially made for photography, but it’s batteries have gone dead after months of not being used. Bought it maybe 5 years ago. Am thinking surely there are flashlights now that are more powerful and has these functions. Here’s the link to the expensive GL-1: https://tiffen.com/products/lowel-gl-1-power-led
Well well, that Tiffen is expensive stuff.
When it comes to focusing any zoomie will do but stepless dimming is a rare feat with them. That’s pretty much what that tiffen is.
I don’t think you’ll find something really good among reasonably priced stock stuff…but maybe I’m wrong.
You’re probably looking for aspheric zoomie host with momentary switch, have someone swap the driver (so you get dimming firmware) and LED (so you get high CRI).
The bad thing that there are not many zoomie hosts with momentary switch and far fewer quality ones.
Maybe Wowtac A3S? It is of great quality but it may be too small for your needs, leading to not-so-good sustained performance or not good enough focusing (with LED fully focused beam will never be smooth; you will need to limit focus to a subset of that a light can do).
If somebody came up with all these features in a flashlight they would make a killing in the photographers market. If only the D18 zoomed.
The YLP Falcon is a zoomie and they also make the Unicorn with a ramping UI. I was just looking at that today thinking they need to combine those features.
While an e-switch is better you can implement ramping with a mechanical switch, blip to start the dimming, blip to stop. TK’s repository has a couple of ramping firmwares for the ATtiny13A that i know of (Gchart’s ramping-ui and TK’s Crescendo) so theoretically you could build something like a Jaxman Z1 with ramping and a 3v LED that’s up to the job but yes, i don’t know of any zoomie with ramping off the shelf.
Nothing commercially available that I know of. There are good Zoomie hosts like the one I have the UF-T20 is really nice. You can add any 17mm driver or 16mm mcpcb led to it. Mtn Electronics sells a fet driver with ToyKeepers Creshendo firmware that allows clicky switch ramping/dimming. You can get something like Samsung LH351D or Nichia 219 high cri led. For a fee, they will build and test your light for you so it’s almost like buying one off the shelf.