FW3A, a TLF/BLF EDC flashlight - SST-20 available, coupon codes public

Okay, but raw/clear aluminum is not part of this group buy.

I send my Proto4 to my friend Andreas for beamshots.

Beamshots from Andreas

Thank you Andreas for your great work. :+1:

Thanks Bluzie and Andreas! It surely shows how the beam looks like, and i’m liking it :wink:
BTW, that is with a 10508 Carclo, not the originally intended 10511 which will give a different beam with more hotspot, not so wide!
I do like it this way too, though as there are no beam artifacts :wink:

Wow, the gray anodization has a bit more blue in it than I realized.

Maybe these pictures were taken under a bright light. (Probably, maybe it’s due to a certain temperature of light that adds a blue tint)

Perhaps the blueish tint is most probably the result of lighting (which affect the tint of the gray finish) when the photos were taken.

I have posted this photo elsewhere, and as an example of that effect, to show the change of gray to blueish, of the same light and time of photo-taking ( the right photo is the real gray finish of the Avaritia NA40SE) are the photos below:

More photos from this thread: HERE

Certainly not being the best person to brag about his photographic skills,
but I think that every person involved has shown us a photo with a different color of ano.
And I can’t imagine that LT fills a fresh bath of ano for every copy they send.

Is it possible to send one of the last specimen to a professional photographer, like DBCustom?
Or is it advisable to publish only photo’s of the FW3A in the company of well known lights?

/\ … THIS … /\

Agreed, thanks tatasal. . :+1:

They don’t do this themselves. It’s outsourced, afaik.

The exact color doesn’t matter to me. They all look good. :partying_face:

Amen!! . :+1: . :beer: :beer:

yes i agree with others all colors so far looks good.

Regarding emitter options: I’d actually prefer SST-20 over LH351D in this light. In fact, I’ll be installing some regardless. I know that means my vote shouldn’t count for much, but at least consider my reasoning.

It’s true that the SST-20 are dimmer than either the LH351D or the XP-L HI, and almost certainly have worse tint than the XP-L HI. However, let’s not get bogged down with comparisons to the XP-L HI since that’s an excellent choice and is getting produced either way. And the SST-20 isn’t going to have significantly worse tint than the LH351D; they’re both known to have fairly green binning on average if you don’t shop carefully.

The LH351D is a much floodier emitter than theSST-20 (which throws more like the XP-L HI), and in an already-floody 20mm triple TIR it’s going to be wasteful. You’re going to need to run a higher brightness level to light up a particular distance away. The SST-20 is much less efficient in an integrating sphere, but especially in a ramping light you aren’t going to ramp up to the same number of lumens on both options and then complain about how much hotter the SST-20 is getting - you’re going to ramp to the same number of lux on a particular target, because that’s the brightness you can perceive. And the SST-20 will be using less power than the LH351D to get there, not more.

If you care mostly about tint and efficiency, the XP-L HI is still your choice. But if you’re concerned more with CRI (especially R9), in actual use the SST-20 is a great option. I’ve got them in my Emisar D4 and their tight beam makes the light far more useful than the numbers would suggest. And, for a back-to-back comparison, I pulled the SST-20 out of my D4S and installed LH351D’s, because in that larger head they were too focused.

I like the beamshots with the 10508 Carclo a lot. I will mostly use this light to light up thing close distance. So a very evenly floody beam would be nice.
So i hope they can get the LH351D. And i will most likely try to change the optic to a 10508 or something similar.

Here’s a calibrated photo of the FW3A. Used the X-rite colorchecker passport to generate a .dcp color correction profile for the Viltrox LED panel and Panasonic DMC-GM1 mirrorless SLR. It’s not as blue as the previous photo would suggest. Very slight bluish shift on the grey.

Thanks maukka, nice work & pictures!! . :+1: . :beer:

Of all the 50 shades of grey, this is a particular nice one!
Thanks maukka :+1:

+1 awesome stuff :+1:

That looks so smart. Can’t wait to get mine

Fantastic picture maukka. Looks classy! I really like the colour.

The anodising is grey, which behaves similar like white surfaces. Depending on the surrounding color you get a slight color on grey or white. E.g. wear a blue shirt it looks blue and with a green jacket greenish.

In a white fotobox it sould look grey.

Edit: Or you simply look at Maukkas picture :wink:

It’s only slightly blue-tinted. If I take an average color value from each of three people’s pictures, and normalize them, here’s what I found:

  • R/G/B = 77.7% / 88.3% / 100.0% Bluzie
  • R/G/B = 89.0% / 93.8% / 100.0% TK
  • R/G/B = 94.0% / 97.0% / 100.0% Maukka

Maukka’s pictures are color-calibrated, so I’d trust those values the most. If I understand correctly, the others used auto white balance so their colors may be skewed.

Bluzie:

TK:

Maukka: