Beam angle comparisons between three Carclo optics,
10508 (Medium Spot Frosted) - This was installed in my light when I got it
10511 (Narrow Spot Frosted) - Default optics in the production light
10507 (Narrow Spot Plain) - Clear optics with throwiest beam but more artifacts
Throw comparison (edit: 2019-02-12, fixed wrong cd for 10507 and 10511)
Color temperature shift within the beam. Limited to 2% output, that’s why 10511 and 10507 only cover up to 31°
Duv comparison. (Green-magenta axis)
Tint deviation (deltaxy). How much does the tint change within the beam. This illustrates the 10507 color artifacts the best as it has a big shift right in the bright part of the beam. The further from the hotspot the shift is, the less noticeable it is.
The data will be applicable to the NW version of the XP-L HI. It is the same optically even if absolute values are different. Needs another round of testing with LH351D though.
Swapped in Nichia 219b sw40 R9080s. No need to modify firmware for lower output at least with a NCR18650GA. I think the 10508 optic looks best. With 10511 there’s a yellowish spot in the middle of the beam.
There’s hardly any tint shift between modes when under the 8x7135 level. Just gets a bit rosier when FET is active.
With increasing output levels starting with a low one between moon and 1x7135
This is some of the most useful data I’ve ever seen on BLF. I feel like this should be stickied or something, placed at an easy-to-find spot to answer common questions. It’s certainly a lot better than my lame attempts to explain the effects of various optics.
I wonder if there’s a way to produce a “beam ugliness factor” similar to the “PWM snob factor” used in other measurements. Like, maybe a sum of the total deltaxy tint deviation distance travelled, or perhaps difference from a straight line, or something like that. Adding up the total vertical travel in that last graph to produce a single number. It’d be nice to have a number to quantify how good or how bad a beam looks.
The deviation should also be weighted by the relative output compared to the hotspot. It get’s kinda subjective when trying to come up with a formula. For me it’s enough to look at the graphs. Any sudden large movements back and forth especially near the hotspot are bad
All of those are still miles better than an XP-G3 though:
Could you possibly get a 10510 elliptical and test that too? I’m extremely curious about that one and its one of the main reasons I’ve been looking at this light…
The elliptical one doesn’t get much attention, mostly because it doesn’t make a circular beam. But I have one in the mail because I was curious if it might work as a bike headlight… wide but not tall.
Here’s a post from 2014 which shows how the beam looks with XP-E emitters:
It’s a semi-nice bike light in urban traffic. The beam of a headlight meets the street under an angle near to 0° and must not glare drivers or pedestrians.
Symmetrical (to horizontal) optics are less suitable. Too bright near the front wheel, too dark in 10 to 20m distance.
I’m not sure the FW3A would be a great choice for biking though, because bikes have a lot of vibration and it could potentially make the inner tube shift sideways enough to register as a click. I haven’t actually tried it, because it has been cold… but it wouldn’t really be my first choice for a bike light.
I have found this project recently and I found it very interesting.
It look like in other thread it is very popular.
I was thinking about making similar flashlight from my blf a6.
I was trying to find some information about the driver there but I did not manage to get through all messages there. Can you please post some more pictures of it from both sides here? Is it 20 mm driver?
I measured the 219b sw40 triple at 1200 lumens with a 30Q and 950 lumens with a GA. No bluish tint or other weird effects so using a medium current battery is likely fine on turbo. The 30Q I used isn’t new so it has a higher internal resistance than a brand new cell.
1x7135 level is 83 lumens with the sw40 so efficiency on low regulated modes is about 30% worse compared to the cool white XP-L HI.
