Flood to throw lights - why do we need aspheric lenses?

The reflector was from the xenon lamp module of an old Underwater Kinetics 2xAAA light.

It came pre-focused for spot mode with its xenon bulb. I sawed through the bottom of the plastic reflector with a hobby saw, rotating the reflector when I hit the bulb inside When I'd gone all the way around it, I pulled off the reflector and discarded the rest. Then I used a drill matched to the width of the XM-L emitter to widen the hole slightly. I used arctic alumina thermal epoxy to glue the reflector to the white plastic retaining ring that came with the SK58 and was originally used to hold in the metal washer around the emitter.

It looks like Underwater Kinetics still sells these lamp modules. I find they reflect considerably more light than the reflector from a 2xAAA maglite, which I've also tried.

http://www.uwkinetics.com/products/uk2aaa-xenon-mini-pocket-light

Note that I made no attempt to try to get the reflector to perfectly focus the emitter die. It really isn't necessary with this setup. My goal was to make a more beautiful flood mode while giving some usable spill in spot mode and that's what this setup gives.

http://www.candlepowerforums.com/vb/showthread.php?283368-I-have-this-idea...

I have wondered about this before myself ...

with a push-pull mechanism to alter depth..........

The problem with a design like that is it wouldn't work very well at anything other than one setting... The blades have a fixed shape, they're just moved towards/away from the right position for that shape. And chances are your beam would end up shaped like the number of blades, too. Of course, this might be acceptable - having them the wrong shape is kinda like defocusing... So try it and let us know how it works. :)

--Bushytails

If you are interested in how this works, see this: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn14030-liquidmirror-telescopes-are-a-reality-at-last.html