I finally have the light back in my hands. Before sending it back Michael also took some "artsy" beamshots. The light is great for long exposure times because of the rather dark spill.

Nobody up there has answered yet...

It's time for more pictures. The plug in the lens is finally gone!

closer:

even closer...

Here you can see two fine details - the Osram Black Flat is a very thin LED, the Die is lower than that of Cree LEDs. Because of this Michael used especially flat screws and copper sheet metal (insulated with shrink tube) instead of round wires to block the smallest amount of light possible.

What follows is something that I really wanted to do with this light even though it's quite difficult: a picture where the yellow reflection of the LED die fills up the entire reflector (from this point on the real lumunious intensity can be measured because the beam has assumed its final form). 

The camera was over 10m (32ft) away.

With 150mm tele

The money shot:

Here the light was dimmed to 1% and the Camera was at its absolute darkest settings (during the day!):

This is what it looks like to be lit up from this distance during the day at max brightness (not very nice):

NeutralFan wrote:

Amazing flashlight and pictures! A lot of time, effort, and (a little) money spent on a truly one-of-a-kind flashlight. Do you have plans for another one, or are you just going to admire this one for awhile?

Thanks. I don’t have the need or want to have Michael build another one. Also he wouldn’t do it anyhow (it took much longer than anticipated) and I don’t just have spare Maxabeam heads lying around.

Still missing were the dimensions and the wheight:

• Length: 32.4cm (12.8in)
• Diameter of head: 14.5cm (5.7in)
• Diameter of tailcap: 4.9cm (1.8in)
• Wheight with batteries: 1.445kg (3.2lbs)

Wheight of some of the parts:

• Head: ~600g (1.3lbs)
• Body: ~541g (1.2lbs)
• Tailcap: 103g (3.6oz)
• Battery holder: 56.7g (2oz)
• Batteries: 144.1g (5.1oz)

The BLF GT is around 60% heavier, mainly because of its five additional batteries and the material around them.

Time for more beamshots. I'm getting gloser to my goal of 2.6km (1.62mi) beamshots. 

To make these shots seem more realistic they need be viewed in fullscreen mode on a large monitor in a dark room. This way much more detail can be seen.

544m(1785ft):

Tele:

498m(1634ft):

Cell-phone beamshot very close to the light (makes the beam look wide):

1700-1800m (1.06-1.12mi)

Tele (overexposed by a lot):

A darker target next to the building (1500m - 0.93mi) (with my own eyes I couldn't see this being lit up):

2100m (1.31mi) (the mast, the lit up castle is around 4.8km away):

luminarium iaculator wrote:

Show them direct comparison with 300 kcd Brinyte you have?

This?

It's a bit too close actually, the beam of Excalibur isn't fully formed yet. 

luminarium iaculator wrote:

I thought on some fresh outdoor pics. Lets say 200 meters or less distance? It is clear even from close pic that candela difference.

It might take me a while, it's cold currently . Here's a gif comparing it with my 330kcd Brinyte. I used the old beamshots ("only" 1.5Mcd) and brightened the pics a bit to make viewing them during daytime easier.

Distance: 280m

luminarium iaculator wrote:

ARC wrote:

Very impressive project, love how the maxabeam head is so well integrated into the body, like it was always meant to look like that I am a big fan of long throwing lights, there is nothing like putting a spot of light over a mile away, i have a Gen3 Maxabeam and you can pretty much put a spot of light on anything the eye can see.

So 12-13 milion candelas?

That's a lot of work. The Maxabeam needs to measured in around 100m distance to get accurate values.

EDIT: here are some new 50m (164ft) beamshots, again with the 330kcd Brinyte. Unfortunately there are overexposed by too much. The hotspot of the Excalibur is blown out. 

The pics are new, so 1.7Mcd.

Beating the Maxabeam will be possible with laser phosphor. With LEDs it will be very difficult. Could take 5-10years still or maybe never.

Enderman wrote:

luminarium iaculator wrote:

Oh. I see you are very optimistic guy lol

My light should beat the maxabeam in less than 5 months Obviously it will be a bit bigger, but still counts as a flashlight

Well yes, of course.

I meant beating the Maxabeam by using the same head or at least the same reflector size. Not possible with LED currently.

It continues.

During a very clear night.

The camera was around 10-15m away from the light. I used the longest possible exposure. 

Since many of you probably don't know the the driver that was used here, I have some more pictures.

From left to right: classic 105C, Ampere! driver, Stripe v4 dimmer module, USB programmer for the dimmer module (the linked pages are in German). You can ugnor the cables, they are not stock.

The inductor is rather large:

I have added a clickable table of contents to the first post to make finding things easier.

Also, here's another beamshot (240m - 787ft). This time it was raining:

Finally it's done!

Beamshots in 3.4km (2.1mi) distance!

The conditions where very good which allowed me to make the beamshots I have been wanting for quite a while (ANSI distance of the light or further). They were taken with an Olympus E-520 using the following settings:

• Aperture F/8
• Shutterspeed 30s
• ISO 1600

I purposefully overexposed them to allow for viewing under daylight conditions (in reality the sky was dark). The target is the water tower to the left of and behind the building (which itself was 1.4km away) in a distance of 3.4km.

14mm:

42mm:

cropped:

Gif:

Some more fuzzy smartphone pics: