I don’t mind natural / no-dye anodizing, like what Zebralight and DQG do. It’s strong and it gives the light sort of a darkened grey or brown color depending on how thick the anodizing is.
Clear / silver anodizing like the Convoy lights is pretty thin though, enough that some areas can conduct electricity on some units, because thicker coatings darken the surface. From what I hear, Simon had some trouble getting the right balance on those because a little too far one way makes it too dark and a little too far the other way makes it too thin.
Originally I thought it was anodized to a normal thickness with silver dye, but apparently that’s not how he did it. It’s just thin enough that it doesn’t change the color.
I wouldn’t complain if the FW3A used natural type-III anodizing, even if that makes the surface a darker color. But I also wouldn’t complain about a thinner “clear” anodizing or even none at all. I like all of them. Bonus points for purple though, or rainbow, or candy colors. Would be pretty awesome to get candy-grape purple (chromed with translucent purple over it).
Purple is a surprisingly popular color, even among men.
I remember when I learned this very clearly. At the time I was running a company that sold paintball gear (aka, a heavily male dominated sport). I came across a really good deal on some clearance grips (the handle for the paintball marker “Gun”) from a supplier in a few colors.
I ordered a bunch of black and camo as these are always popular.
They had a massive oversupply of purple grips and cut me a really good deal if I got all 200 of them. I figured that for the price I could give them away as bonuses if they didn’t sell.
Turned out that the purple grips outsold all the other colors by LOT. I sold out of the purple grips in a few months but it took me a year or 2 to move all the other colors even though I had much less of them.
Surprised the heck out of me, the only thing I could come up with is that it was the only true different color from the normal black and thus people just wanted something different.
I made this block as part of a holder system to use a 42” diffuser in Portrait Photography. The hole through the top, side to side, accepts a hexagonal bar that in turn holds 3 arms that hold the 42” round diffuser panel. The block sits on a tripod. The hex rod and supporting rods in 1/2” round bar are also anodized purple.
Mother’s day gift? Breast Cancer Awareness Gift light? Daughter introductory birthday present, bringing new blood into the fold? I can see a lot of folks liking that.