[REVIEW] Acebeam W10. 1KM of throw, in your front pocket. 21700/18650, USB-C charging.

With a wavien collar the beam pattern does not change, nor does it refocus light.
Since it is all bounced back to the LED, the light that is bounced back increases the led intensity by bouncing off of the LED again.
Both before and after it is coming from the area of the LED, so the beam just becomes brighter and nothing else changes.

With a double aspheric you do get more lumens but they are not “in a specific spot”, they actually are spread out more.
If you compare a single aspheric to a double aspheric, the double aspheric will project more lumens but the projected spot of light is bigger.
It is a linear relationship, more lumens -> more area = same intensity.
Since lenses aren’t perfect having the second aspheric will slightly reduce the light transmission and total lux.

Reflecting the light back at the led until it makes it out the hole, does change the beam though, your just running a reflector backwards creating a tighter hotspot.
Any kind of reflector will help throw light but they all change the beam in some way.
I don’t disagree that two lenses means light loss for each lense that the light passes through.

No, no tighter hotspot, exactly the same size. Brighter but not tighter. The wavien collar is not part of the optical system that projects light from the led to the hotspot.

No, not any reflector will help throw. In a lens light most reflectors will make just a secondary beam, that is: rings.
No, a properly focused collar used with a symmetric LED dies does not affect beam shape.
Why?

  • The light that would be originally in the beam - is unaffected. The collar reflects only the light that goes towards flashlight body.
  • The light reflected by the collar focuses on the LED. The LED’s phosphor absorbs the photons and re-emits them in a random direction. Some of them are re-emitteted towards the lens and increase throw - w/out affecting the beam. The others are lost and don’t affect the beam either.
  • There’s light not absorbed by phosphor, reflected off LED dome etc. It may bounce around the light several times, but it’s always LED-reflector path unless it goes from the LED towards the lens. In which case it increases throw w/out affecting the beam.

The light must get through the collar, it’s not magic, it makes it brighter by refocusing the light out an opening at the end. It doesn’t create lumens, it’s gathering up the stragglers and putting them in a narrower path. It definitely still requires an aspheric lens to create a tight beam.

Same thing the first of two aspheric lenses would do but more efficiently

I agree but I’m not talking any reflector and an aspheric lense, I was just saying that, by it reflecting it back at the source until it heads out the end of the collar (which is a backwards reflector) your focusing the beam.

Considering it culminated all the light and projects it out too the lens, how am I wrong by saying it’s creating a tighter beam. It’s functionally a projector before it gets to the lens

The small lens (we call it “pre-collimator”) needs to be spherical, not aspherical. That is how Vinz always did it. I have also had a light made using such a second lens. It works great for the focused mode but makes the defossused mode a bit more ugly.

These effects are seperate. The additional light coming out of the opening is created by the blue part of the spectrum of the LED hitting it again and being converted to more yellow-green light (it changes direction after the conversion, it’s scattered). This increases the intensity and also dramatically changes the tint (more yellow-green).

If you used a mirror (collar) that doesn’t reflect the blue part of the spectrum there wouldn’t be a large increase in Luminance. You would just cut off 75% of the LEDs total emitted light.

Changing the tint doesn’t add brightness though, so it is infact pulling light that would be in the spill and putting into the main beam.

I don’t think it would cut brightness, unless your converting light that’s not in our visible spectrum into seeable and usable light. But Led’s Don’t have that

This is a great torch. Buy it and don’t worry (just don’t expect much spill). lol

The light that the wavien collar collects would not be spill.
It would hit the inside of the head of the flashlight and be completely wasted.
This light does not come out of the flashlight because it does not go through the lens.

A collar reflects the light back at the LED projecting the exact same image of the die on the LED.
It does not make a smaller spot or a different beam, it just makes the LED brighter, and the projected spot brighter.

The spill of a beam is the light that hits the inside of the head, so why are you saying no? I’ll reword it one more time. Your Wavian collar, collects the light, aims it at the lens. Preventing waste, in essence projecting it onto the lens.
So please stop saying it doesn’t. You are redirecting output so less is wasted, I don’t no why you keep disagreeing then rewording it. Makes me feel like I’m dyslexic up in here.

It’s definitely more efficient then using a small aspheric lens close to the led, then a second one for final focus. It’s doing the same job just more efficiently. If you don’t believe me that’s fine, it’s an idea someone much smarter than me came up with close to a decade ago.

No, it collects light and aims it back to the led die. In the die most of this light is absorbed and converted to the different colour and then send out again in random direction. Please accept that that is a completely different, and much more going on both physically and optically than simply “collects and aimed at the lens”.

You are using the wrong technical terms. Spill is part of the light that has already exited the flashlight. The term has no meaning inside the light. It only pertains to lights that have a normal, front-facing reflector (spill is the light that doesn’t hit such a normal reflector, it directly exits the flashlight).

The collar only works because the phosphor of the LED is excited additionally by redirected blue light. The phosphor is not a mirror, it doesn’t reflect a lot of light.

The Wavien collar collects 75% of the total amount of light that a domeless LED emits. The blue part of this 75% re-exites the Phosphor which doubles the Luminance. Thus the 25% of the total light that directly exits the collar (and can then hit a lens) is effectively doubled.

This means the collar is around 50% efficient in terms of lumens (total amount of light).

To understand how it works you need to understand what Luminance is/means.

The exit of the collar is smaller, and as such does cut the directionality of the light, negating most of 180 degrees, so stop saying no. Put the wave an collar on without the lens and look at the wall, then take it off. You’ll see a huge difference in the direction of the beam.
Especially on the scale of the light cannon.

Taking a 180 degrees and turning it into 25% of that is still focusing the beam though, whether theirs more going on or not. I’ve never questioned the efficiency of the collar. Only suggesting that it does infact refocus the light direction.

…is not focussing, it is called cutting off.

It is impossible to discuss matter if not the accepted terminology is followed, discussions are already hard enough when correct terms are used.

Fair enough, you tried to help and I appreciate it

:+1:

  1. “spill” is light that comes out of a flashlight without hitting a forward-facing reflector. A lens flashlight has no spill regardless of whether you use a collar or not. The light hitting the inside of the head is not spill because it does not exit the lens.

2) The collar reflects light back at the LED, not at the lens.

The entire point of the wavien collar is that it does not aim any light at the lens.
This is why the lumen output can increase without making the spot larger (which is what a secondary lens does) and more lumens + same area = higher intensity

I think you simply don’t understand what the terms mean, that’s all, not your fault.